Mind Barrier

A few days ago, I was challenged to not say anything incriminating while drunk. I passed with flying colour (although now they're making stuff up based on the questions I didn't answer ~_~). I had steeled my mind against revealing the secrets I particularly wanted to keep. I noticed that throughout the night, despite the fact that my inhibitions were lowered, and I could feel myself saying things that I normally would not have said, whenever the topic was on either of those things, I felt this mental alarm go off, and I knew I had to tread carefully.

The funny thing is that the mental barrier seems to have remained, even after so long. D is still trying to find out who the hero is, but now it seems like he has moved on to Special K, which is great!

Still, I wonder if this is how intelligence agents train themselves to resist interrogation. I'm trying to work out which one is better. On one hand, you can't reveal a secret that you don't remember. I think that's the strategy I usually go for. A lot of the time people will tell me something, and I will put it away in a box in my head, and proceed to forget about it until they bring it up again. It's not the best strategy, as I sometimes forget important things, but it's awesome for keeping people's secrets!

On the other hand, if you know ahead of time what you don't to reveal, you can begin to put together a cover story, and that way your lies will be plausible. You know which lines of conversation to avoid, which means you can direct the conversation away.

There must be some technique to keeping secrets. A quick Google search seems to say that the best way to keep secrets is to convince people not to tell you any. Awesome advice. Pharmacist says the golden rule is not to tell anyone...

This thread from /r/theRedPill seems to advocate just staying quiet in general, this this is more in relation to people who seem to reveal too much, rather than keeping secrets. As one poster said:

Well said. Sometimes, you do have to disclose something you know that if you didn't, could jeopardize your standing with that person..
It is, however, better to remain silent or talk less.
When you are not an open book, no-one can guess your next move.
If you are going to share everything you know, then you have better have an exit strategy no-one knows of.. Again, just easier to STFU.

Pharmacist says it was an effective technique used by Louis XIV.

I always thought I was pretty much an open book. In one of my review sessions, a piece of feedback I got from someone was:

No agenda of her own. Very honest and open in all my experiences...

I was really confused about what he meant by that agenda comment. A suggested it was because I had meeting invitations without an agenda, but I'm pretty sure for any meeting involving that person, I had an agenda. Over time, I think I have worked out what he was trying to say. In the working group that we were both a part of, I never tried to push my own agenda. Everyone know what I was thinking at all times. To be honest, in retrospect, I think that made me very open to manipulation, as other people used me to push their agenda, but overall, it made it easy for people to work with me because they were never trying to second-guess what I was thinking.

However, I'm starting to think that this has changed. I still say what I think (in a SFW kind of way), but I get the feeling that people don't trust me yet. Maybe it's because I'm still somewhat new, and I've mostly kept to myself in order to avoid "bringing the people together" (though a part of me is starting to realise this is a losing battle because I'm already planning on making my new video). There are people on my team who seem to try and ask me questions to subtly work out what I think about something, without asking me directly. Maybe they're just a bit cynical, as they are always surprised when I say I will bake something, and then actually bake it.

Either way, it's only a matter of time before I break them. :)

In my experience, I've found that people tend to open up to you faster if you open up to them first. Perhaps that is the secret to finding out secrets.

Wow, this post took a huge detour.