Trying to make the world/Scotland a better place looks ostensibly straightforward. Find the problem. Work out the solution. Apply.
Of course, life isn’t like that at all, so often we can barely work out what the problem is (sure, lots of people are in fuel poverty, but why are they?), let alone work out the right solution. One reaction is to claim we know the answer (people don’t have enough money for bills), often reasonably, apply a solution (give people money when it’s cold) and then monitor the result (targets for uptake/heat levels in homes).
The problem is, when things become about targets, you risk not fixing the problem. Because, unless your target is absolutely on the button mearsuring the perfect solution to the problem, you end off focusing on the target, not on fixing the problem.
Another way of saying this, is that I think we all need an appropriately chastened epistemology… we do not know the right things to do, we do not know the solutions to the problems, and our best guesses are just that, guesses. So, we always have to remain open to the possibility that the solution we are proposing is not the best way of fixing the problem.
Need to measure how fixed the problem is, not how good we are at apply our fixes.
