Keeping a secret for four hundred years
Jul. 26th, 2007 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI won't say whether it exists or not, but much in Foucault's Pendulum much attention is paid to the implausibility of the idea there may be secret descendants of the Templars, putting a long-laid plan. Many other books (and conspiracy theories) have similar ideas.
How *would* you go about organising such a thing? First, a few background points.
* Obviously there are *some* secret societies. The masons actually exist :)
* If that helps the members out now, that's obviously a reason to do it.
* Or if they're following some religious purpose.
* Or if you want to shape the future of humanity.
* But would you want to found a society in order to benefit the N00-year-hence members of it? But that's what some fictional societies with a big secret seem supposed to do. (See 1984 for a philosophical discussion of maintaining a caste system.)
If you did want to, how would you do it? First, the parameters:
* Let's say you have a big secret you want put into effect or revealed at the next millennium.
* You want to prevent anyone finding out before hand, including the members.
* But want the secret to survive.
And, so, what:
* One technique is to simply write lots of instructions and bury them. They (hopefully) won't be found too soon and (hopefully) when they're found some people primed by rumour will follow the instructions.
That later point is when many stories are set: with the digging up of a mysterious treasure map and wondering who wrote it.
* Another is to found a small secret society, and trust the members to hand the secret down to the next generation. This is also popular, though fragile.
If too few people know, sooner or later they die at once, and the followers are stuck.
If too many, someone wants to go off, and grab the secret early.
Each man/group choosing a trustworthy successor can work, but they can't *always* be right. And over their life, they may stop caring.
And they can all be hunted down.
* What other tricks are possible? Perhaps estimate Moore's Law and release an encrypted message publicly, and rely on it being decrypted at about the right time.
* Have several groups with part of the secret, to meet at some point in the future.
It's tricky specifying when though. You can say "meet at this place, this time, this day, this year", and rely on statistics to make it robust. If a secret group has a 10% chance of dying out and 10% chance of going rogue, it has 80% chance of doing the right thing. Founding three such groups needing one other to decrypt the secret improves the chances to ~3% of two dying out, and ~3% of two going rogue.
But no "Machiavellian" secret societies anyone's tried to tell *me* about have been so clever.
Alternatively, try to specify a place you can't find in advance, eg. where the next [event] occurs, one month later. But clever groups trying to jump the gun might cheat, eg. by going to the *last* [event], on the anniversary, and hoping another group will think the same way.
* Found a religious order and tell them it's god's will.
* Launch the secret in a space probe designed to intercept the earth in N years.
* Lock it up and trust no-one ever considers trying to cheat mechanically.
* Hide it in a statue, church, or other long-lasting publicly visible place, with a clock designed to go off at the right time. Anyone looking before that won't know where, but at the time it'll be obvious to all comers.
* Similarly, you could hide it in a computer -- or mutation-resistant biological -- virus, designed to spread slowly and go off on that date.
Though none seem perfect. Does anyone have any better ideas?
How *would* you go about organising such a thing? First, a few background points.
* Obviously there are *some* secret societies. The masons actually exist :)
* If that helps the members out now, that's obviously a reason to do it.
* Or if they're following some religious purpose.
* Or if you want to shape the future of humanity.
* But would you want to found a society in order to benefit the N00-year-hence members of it? But that's what some fictional societies with a big secret seem supposed to do. (See 1984 for a philosophical discussion of maintaining a caste system.)
If you did want to, how would you do it? First, the parameters:
* Let's say you have a big secret you want put into effect or revealed at the next millennium.
* You want to prevent anyone finding out before hand, including the members.
* But want the secret to survive.
And, so, what:
* One technique is to simply write lots of instructions and bury them. They (hopefully) won't be found too soon and (hopefully) when they're found some people primed by rumour will follow the instructions.
That later point is when many stories are set: with the digging up of a mysterious treasure map and wondering who wrote it.
* Another is to found a small secret society, and trust the members to hand the secret down to the next generation. This is also popular, though fragile.
If too few people know, sooner or later they die at once, and the followers are stuck.
If too many, someone wants to go off, and grab the secret early.
Each man/group choosing a trustworthy successor can work, but they can't *always* be right. And over their life, they may stop caring.
And they can all be hunted down.
* What other tricks are possible? Perhaps estimate Moore's Law and release an encrypted message publicly, and rely on it being decrypted at about the right time.
* Have several groups with part of the secret, to meet at some point in the future.
It's tricky specifying when though. You can say "meet at this place, this time, this day, this year", and rely on statistics to make it robust. If a secret group has a 10% chance of dying out and 10% chance of going rogue, it has 80% chance of doing the right thing. Founding three such groups needing one other to decrypt the secret improves the chances to ~3% of two dying out, and ~3% of two going rogue.
But no "Machiavellian" secret societies anyone's tried to tell *me* about have been so clever.
Alternatively, try to specify a place you can't find in advance, eg. where the next [event] occurs, one month later. But clever groups trying to jump the gun might cheat, eg. by going to the *last* [event], on the anniversary, and hoping another group will think the same way.
* Found a religious order and tell them it's god's will.
* Launch the secret in a space probe designed to intercept the earth in N years.
* Lock it up and trust no-one ever considers trying to cheat mechanically.
* Hide it in a statue, church, or other long-lasting publicly visible place, with a clock designed to go off at the right time. Anyone looking before that won't know where, but at the time it'll be obvious to all comers.
* Similarly, you could hide it in a computer -- or mutation-resistant biological -- virus, designed to spread slowly and go off on that date.
Though none seem perfect. Does anyone have any better ideas?
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:27 pm (UTC)For example, if what you wanted humanity to know in 1000 years was that a dirty great asteroid would be hurtling dead-centre towards Earth and require some tricky celestial snooker to deflect it, then you wouldn't bugger about with secret societies or trickily encrypted messages; you'd encourage the building of Spaceguard observatories and fund initial R&D into pieces of cue chalk the size of New Mexico.
(This is a poor example because (a) such an asteroid would have no particular need to be kept secret until 1000 years hence, and (b) you wouldn't have any reason to have found out about it that far in advance of the rest of the world anyway; but it illustrates my point nonetheless, and also allows me to use the line about the cue chalk :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:42 pm (UTC)Perhaps in a society where there's an ingrained sense that the fundamentals of that society won't have changed in 1000 years' time?[1]
Implausible scenario:
So, maybe this asteroid is going to hit Earth at a known point a long way into the future, and let's say that the person who knows this envisages a way of protecting some parts of the Earth from the impact while leaving the rest to be wiped out (insert some Dr Who style science here). Now, it happens that the society in which the person lives is opposed by another society, their sworn eternal enemies, and so this person desires that they one day be wiped out by this asteroid. So the person chooses the 'found a small secret society, and trust the members to hand the secret down to the next generation' option, so that there is already a means in place of protecting his society from the impact (the sect having put all the contingency plans in place by the time of the impact), while the enemy are destined only to find out when it's too late, to torment them just before they die.
And then insert a plot in which members of the secret sect 1000 years later have divided loyalties, etc, etc, and you have a novel :)
[1] For real examples, see think ancient Rome, the Third Reich, etc.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:54 pm (UTC)A racial motivation might make more sense. The longest any recognisable widespread culture's survived is probably ancient China?[1] But white people, black people and yellow people will probably be in much the same place in 1000 years.
[1] Some *expect* to last forever. But the absence of anyone doing it makes me doubt the competence of anyone expecting that to form a complex and reliable plan. Eg. if you think Rome will last forever, just tell the Emperor to pass down the secret :) I guess they might be gambling: *if* this culture lasts, they want to protect it.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-27 05:13 pm (UTC)Ooh, well, that's a good question... It depends what you mean, I suppose. I mean, if you take Christianity as a natural progression in terms of cultural unity, then the Roman world is still going strong (dialects of the language still there, the culture still there, the sense of western unity still there, the legal system still there, etc.) :)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-30 12:28 pm (UTC)[1] Fucking Asteroid is metaphorical fwiw :)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-26 05:48 pm (UTC)Hmmm, what *would* be -- potentially some massive new form of power? Imagine if the stars aligning gave some sort of cosmic power that could be used for great good or great evil (tm). You might want to bank on a small group of people exploiting it for good rather than telling everyone. I admit that's not a *very* good example