> its just that number-of-people * odds-someone-breaks-the-lie * time conspiracy would have to be held means that conspiracies that have a lot of people in the

> its just that number-of-people * odds-someone-breaks-the-lie * time conspiracy would have to be held means that conspiracies that have a lot of people in the loop for a long time are unlikely to go unexposed It's also very easy to overestimate the likelihood of discovery, since it turns out all of these factors are correlated. Remember, the conspiracies you find out about are, by definition, the ones that didn't stay secret. Now consider how many secrets you keep, and how many secrets of comparable magnitude you know about arbitrary other people.