Fuzzy on the Dark Side

Why are ignorant people so confident? How do politicians utilize conflation to influence groups? Why do scientists fall for similar mistakes? How is complexity managed? Why does culture effortlessly shape what we can do?

This book argues: Because of approximations!

Incompleteness pervades our interactions with the world. Its effects on individual and group behaviors can foster creativity or create invisible prisons. We navigate incompleteness with approximations and, too often, end up on the ‘dark side’.

This book resembles a tourist’s trip much more than a scientist’s expedition, and is for anyone interested in a broader understanding of an individual’s mental life and how identities, incompletenesses, and social contexts shape it.

As we examine approximations and think about their origins and the problems they can create, the reader will encounter glimpses from physics, biology, philosophy of science, management, marketing, politics, systems theory, fuzzy logic, geometry, design and creativity, culture, and neuro-science and more...

Fuzzy on the Dark Side is a book about incompleteness, creativity, thinking, identities, and systems. Roughly - it is an approximation of the 'Approximate Thinking' super idea.

Ahmad Hijazi’s salad of professional experiences includes programming neural networks, selling servers, notebooks and desktops, running advertising and branding campaigns in a dozen countries, research in consumer behavior, creating an Arabic culture-powered learning platform, managing business units in leading electronics companies, overseeing commercial partnerships and alliances, teaching courses in marketing, management, and innovation, building many (good and bad) web and mobile applications, leading inter-company R&D and manufacturing teams, designing simulations and creative learning experiences, advising companies and startups, delivering corporate trainings, academic management, and writing (short stories, graphic novels, non-fiction, research)… Nothing (ever) fits perfectly… and – even as it keeps growing – the list remains incomplete.

Ahmad has lived and worked in eight countries and visited more than fifty. He has completed degrees in engineering, research, and business management, and has a soft spot for the humanities and soft disciplines like philosophy, literature, and the arts.

These diverse professional, intellectual, and personal treks have led (among other things) to the exploration of incompleteness and creativity in “Fuzzy on the Dark Side”...