A heuristically derived stabilization strategy for an unstable and unintuitive plant by fuzzy control is described. It is shown that the often used classical fuzzy controller, which is both static and time invariant, is incapable of stabilizing such types of plants. However, a simple modification to the classical fuzzy controller architecture that separates the measurement and control phases, together with a hierarchical control strategy, enable the unstable and unintuitive plant to be stabilized. The fuzzy control strategy, as well as the new fuzzy controller architecture, are based on the consideration of "what a human subject would do when dealing with a physical plant which is both unstable and unintuitive". The stabilization strategy is then generalized to other mathematically similar systems. While the rules for the stabilization of the plant are heuristically defined, the membership functions associated with the rules are tuned by a simulated annealing procedure.