The first time I heard the term “Fuzzy Logic” I thought it referred to the way cats plead with you to pet them and then park themselves just outside your reach. Rather than binary absolutes, fuzzy logic admits the existence of “degrees of truth” that acknowledge the ambiguous nature of nature. Life, in other words, is a multiple-multiple examination wherein the answer often turns out to be “all of the above.” One commonly cited example is when you toss a ball to someone. You don’t calculate exact values for all the variables constituting the trajectory; you just throw the dang thing in the general direction of your target and hope it doesn’t break Mrs. Anderson’s front window again. Fuzzy logic is a pandemic that has infected people and institutions worldwide and across historical epochs.
