MCDM, or Multiple Criteria Decision Making, is the name for a family of decision methods used to choose among several options while considering several different criteria. In these methods, the criteria and the weight of each are fixed first; then the options are evaluated and ranked using the criteria and their weights. (To know more, search, or read Persian Wikipedia or English Wikipedia, or watch the YouTube video.)
Among the advantages of MCDM methods are more exact calculation and ranking of options, covering different criteria, and deciding on their basis.
There are some general criticisms of the method, including:
- For the conclusion to be right, the criteria and their weights must be specified completely and precisely, which can be time-consuming and complicated in some cases.
- When the number of criteria and options is very large, the method is impractical because of its computational complexity.
- In some cases the criteria and weights may be set without background and without evaluable, testable data, which can lead to wrong results.
Because of the engineering mind those of us who studied engineering have, it often happens that without knowing it weanalyse conditions, relationships and many things about human relations with MCDM (the more correct term is Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis, MCDA). For example, someone has published a paper titled “A new approach to deciding on a suitable spouse using multi-attribute decision-making methods” (link).
From experience, my personal view is that, since
The heart did not lie about what it saw. – Quran 53:11
and
The complexity of a thing is often proportional to its beauty Alexandra Adornetto
and human relationships, for all their complexity, are among the most beautiful things that can happen in the world, using these criteria and methods when the heart is not at peace with something basically does not lead to good results. These are, I think, the most serious objections to using MCDA and MCDM in human relationships:
- The chance of errors in evaluating and choosing needs because of different weather, body hormones and so on: in this method the final choice is usually made only on the values fixed in advance, and factors like experience, personality and things like being happy or feeling at ease may not be considered. Can’t these also be put among the criteria? Yes, but scoring them depends on different environmental and hormonal conditions.
- If the values and criteria used in MCDM are not defined correctly, decisions may have undesirable results: since using engineering and mathematical methods makes the mind coherent but also channels it, if at the moment you were writing the values and criteria you did not consider every side (which basically cannot happen before death!), the final output may be a camel-cow-leopard or an ostrich. Can’t consultation solve this problem? Yes, but in the end what is passed on to us is the advice, experience and worldview of someone else, and it often happens that two children of one family, with the same diet, the same blood and the same upbringing and media diet, hold opposite opinions. Maybe others’ experience is reason enough to reject a person, but not reason enough to approve one.
So, in my own view, having sabotaged MCDM in human relationships, what should a human being, made in hardship, under the influence of hormones and weather and not knowing the future, who needs to decide, do?
I think there should be a set of indicators that decide whether a human relationship continues or not, and, according to how important the matter is, one checks whether the person has them; after that, and after consulting different people according to the importance of the matter (for example, to keep buying from a shop or not, we need not ask everyone on the street for advice, but for something like marriage, the family as aninstitution has a very, very important say), the heart should be the one to say whether it happens or not. Naturally, if we accompany all this with religious belief and entrusting matters to God and the Imams, the final outcome will be nothing but abundant good. And finally, it should be noted:
Imam Ali, peace be upon him: Ask hearts about loves, for they are witnesses that cannot be bribed.
and
Come and solve problems by way of the heart, so that this saying becomes a proverb across the world:
The foundation of mathematics will blow away if problems are solved in the manner of lovers.
Gholamreza Tarighi
(Persian poem, rendered here in prose-like translation.)
MCDMmulti_criteria_decision_makinghuman_relationshipsinstitution
Related: A classified life (the same discussion from another angle: where thinking systematically or in compartments works and where it does not) and Philosophising about marriage today.