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They're not protecting 'a' secret. They're protecting their copy of the secret.
So while you get X more work, you get X more copies to protect. So you're actually losing ground.
my favorite answer so far. it is exactly what i meant but i did not realize that it being the same secret (which is technically just half implied by the grammar i think) is what breaks the dynamics.
if it's 1000 different secrets, then it kind of works but only if the guesser knows/assumes the distribution is uniform. (if it's the same secret then the guesser knows it's the same secret then that's the extreme, maybe a "degenerate" case, like having 1000 doors to one bank.)
You're getting near a description of Merkle's Puzzles, one of the earlier versions of public key cryptography. If you like thinking about this stuff I think it's a fun read.
Do they get the whole secret, or just a piece?
Do they get the secret (or their piece of it) "in the clear" or is it encrypted? Do they even know who holds the encryption key(s)?
I lean down to whisper into my wife's ear "let's negotiate protocols, I have some gossip"
If that's your idea of protection - how many kids do you have?
Three can keep a secret if two are dead.
This could be a fun riddle:
What's harder to protect the more protectors it has? A secret.
Just split the secret so no one knows the full secret. Then it's more protected.
More people protecting the secret means more people know the secret and the more people that know the secret the more likely it is that the secret will be exposed
this way of phrasing is reasonable but it feels like those should cancel out. i mean why taking a situation of 1 person protecting a secret and multiplying it by N changes it.
oh i got it now.
if it's 1000 people protecting 1000 different secrets (each their own) then it does cancel out.
note that it does get worse if the secret-guesser knows something about the statistical distribution of those secrets, and the value of each secret is kind of interchangeable to them. then things like rainbow tables exist.
More people do X makes X more done
This is a general trend, but like in the case you noted, doesn't always hold.
Another example: if one woman can have one baby in nine months, how long does it take nine women to have one baby?
A lot comes down to technique:
When "protecting a secret" do the people doing the protecting actually know the secret? Do they even know they're doing secret protection? Secret protection works best when the secret is known by nobody.
These 9 women, are they just getting pregnant, or are they plotting a kidnapping?
My project manager says nine women would have a baby in 2 weeks
That type of thinking is required to be a project manager, I think.
"Well, officer, I provided the contractor with one 5 gallon bucket of paint yesterday, and he got two rooms done. But today, when I unloaded ten 5 gallon buckets of paint onto his Honda Civic, he got upset instead of painting twenty rooms like I expected!"
More people or things contributing to a goal does not always add more security/efficiency/capability to achieve said goal.
A classic example is a length of chain.
The more individual links, the more weight the chain as a whole needs to be able to carry.
Each link needs to be able to support the weight of the load and the weight of the entire length of the chain.
More links also introduces more opportunities for links with failure points to be included.
Yes, it's like making a chain out of padlocks, rather than locking two parallel bars together with each
Counterpoint: Put the secrets in a physical file in a room that only a few authorized can enter, the people protecting it stand outside and shoot any unauthorized entrants.
Have problems you need solved?
Guns, lots of them
(And a nuke just in case)
:P
Secrets stay safe in spite of people knowing them, not the other way around. It's like saying, "More holes make the ship more buoyant"
The more people that know a secret, the less secure it is.
If you and you alone know a secret and I need to get it out of you, I only have one chance. If you and a thousand people know the secret, I have a thousand and one chances of forcing the secret out of someone. The more people, the more weak spots and potential holes.
If the secret is in a room and those people are standing in front of it with guns to not let others reach it...
and they don't know the secret
and they don't know the secret is there
and they have many a gun each
-> perfect secret security
More people singing = singing is more done. But it also guarantees way more shitty music/terrible singers.
Also the counter to it is "More people tempted to spill the beans = the bean spilling is that much closer to completion."
I'm not sure your argument is waterproof is all I mean.
In a sense, more people working towards secret protection generally did result in better secret protection, like encryption algorithms and secure architecture and whatnot.
It only starts to become a paradox when you get into actually executing the task of protecting a specific secret... but I think we could draw that line somewhere for almost any task.
There is a point of generality where more people means better results and a point of specificity where you only want the exact right number of people.
Every X introduces a unique potential for failure.
There is something to be said about institutions though. When more people are part of what seems to be an upstanding institution, the more they are inclined to protect the secret in order to protect the institution and its reputation. There are a lot of examples of this. For instance the catholic church, penn state, the trump oligarchy, nasa....
KFC's secret recipe...
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
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