Reading material:
1) You and Your Research, by Richard Hamming
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
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"There's another trait on the side which I want to talk about; that trait is ambiguity. It took me a while to discover its importance. Most people like to believe something is or is not true. Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well. They believe the theory enough to go ahead; they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory. If you believe too much you'll never notice the flaws; if you doubt too much you won't get started. It requires a lovely balance. But most great scientists are well aware of why their theories are true and they are also well aware of some slight misfits which don't quite fit and they don't forget it. "
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2) By definition, what "you" are uniquely good at cannot be represented by logic, mathematics or reason. Otherwise, "you" could be duplicated, cloned, automated. The unique properties of you exist at the boundary of possibility, in the space historically occupied by philosophy/magic/religion, now supplemented by scientific research and metaphysics. A good starting point is understanding the history of the number zero. See also Heinz von Foerster on the subject of ethics and free will, http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html
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"Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide.
Why?
Simply because the decidable questions are already decided by the choice of the framework in which they are asked, and by the choice of rules of how to connect what we call "the question" with what we may take for an "answer." In some cases it may go fast, in others it may take a long, long time, but ultimately we will arrive, after a sequence of compelling logical steps, at an irrefutable answer: a definite Yes, or a definite No.
But we are under no compulsion, not even under that of logic, when we decide upon in principle undecidable questions. There is no external necessity that forces us to answer such questions one way or another. We are free! The complement to necessity is not chance, it is choice! We can choose who we wish to become when we have decided on in principle undecidable questions.
This is the good news, American journalists would say. Now comes the bad news.
With this freedom of choice we are now responsible for whatever we choose! For some this freedom of choice is a gift from heaven. For others such responsibility is an unbearable burden: How can one escape it? How can one avoid it? How can one pass it on to somebody else?"
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3) Tactical Office Politics
http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-...
http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-...
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"This guidance probably should have been Chapter 1 of our Politics 101 series. It’s foundational. It’s a HUGE problem for many professionals, particularly young – and dare we say it, naïve – professionals. So many young people say, “I don’t ‘play politics.’” The more savvy folks around them think, that’s good, because this isn’t a ‘game’ you can ‘play.’ "
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4) The biographical stories in Plutarch's Lives of "Noble Grecians and Romans" were preserved for several centuries by people
who believed those lives were memorable, back when books were non-trivial to produce. These lessons cross platforms, time and space.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutarch%27s_Lives
ePub/Kindle: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/plutarch/lives/