this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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Plenty of research on the topic. Humans cannot remember a unique, high bit random password for each service. Using your brain means one of the following. Low bit passwords that can be cracked, memorable passwords that can be guessed via social engineering, and/or password reuse where one breached service breaches many accounts.
The only known solutions are all based on some sort of actually random generation of passwords, combined with storage of some sort for all but a very small number of extremely important examples (typically just your password manager vaults password). I actually think a paper notebook and dice or card system is an under appreciated option for a lot of people, which falls under the above.
There is one weird alternative, and that is deterministically generated high bit passwords (via a cryptographic hash function). Unfortunately it doesn't work well with stupid snowflake sites that have their own "good password" rules, and falls completely flat when you have to change passwords for just a single or few sites for whatever reason.