You can't be 100% with it no matter what you do...
For example in 1978 Richard Helms, the 8th Director of Central Intelligence, stated that:
Quote:
"We discovered there were some Eastern Europeans who could defeat the polygraph at any time. Americans are not very good at it, because we are raised to tell the truth and when we lie it is easy to tell [we] are lying. But we find a lot of Europeans and Asiatics [who] can handle that polygraph without a blip, and you know they are lying and you have evidence that they are lying."[43]
Quote:
Several countermeasures designed to pass polygraph tests have been described. Asked how he passed the polygraph test, Ames explained that he sought advice from his Soviet handler and received the simple instruction to: "Get a good night's sleep, and rest, and go into the test rested and relaxed. Be nice to the polygraph examiner, develop a rapport, and be cooperative and try to maintain your calm."[44]
What I do, I try to base my judgement less on "testimonies" and more on evidence.
One thing I'd say, not so much for just telling if someone is truthful or lying, but just in dealings with people in general. Humility. If someone is humble, I'm more likely to trust them than if they're cocky. Like with skating, I don't trust just anyone to sharpen skates. If they do it wrong especially on my figure blades, I might need to buy new blades, which is a lot of money. I first got my skates sharpened by a figure skating coach, $20. Numerous people including the coach told me the hockey sharpener would screw them up. Later, I was in VT away from home, there was a guy at the rink in VT, an old guy, who sharpened skates. I brought up my concern with him, that I've heard hockey sharpeners can screw up figure skates and I'm skeptical, he told me pretty humbly that my concern was justified, and told me how he sharpens skates, and he did an awesome job for $5. Couple months later, the older guy at my own rink I heard sharpened figured skates, though he's a hockey sharpener. $8 and he was awesome, too. But, when someone tells me "YEAH SURE I DO FIGURE SKATES I'M AWESOME" like the younger guy at VT rink, I was really really skeptical.
So for me, instead of trying to figure out so much if someone is just lying, I try to make more of a general character assessment based upon lots of factors.
I guess what I do for lying is more like, try to acquire more knowledge, hindsight is 20/20, so what you can do is learn and analyze from your hindsight and more or less turn it into foresight. One other thing is, in dealings with people, try to find all their little lies and inconsistencies, and more or less just save them for later. Anything they do against someone else can be done against you, so you must take that into account. Like if you see a salesman lie to an old lady who doesn't know anything, but he's all buddy buddy with you, because you're knowledgeable, then you know he has potential to lie to you.
04 Sep 2011, 11:32 am
