69Fotos: xmee/iStock.com; privat
I ASK MYSELF 13/2019 SpotlightWhat does
it all mean?
Wenn einfache Erklärungen nicht überzeugen,
müssen oft Verschwörungstheorien herhalten –
selbst dann, wenn sie absolut verrückt klingen.ADVANCED USI ASK MYSELF
AMY ARGETSINGER
is an editor at
The Washington
Post, a leading
daily newspaper
in the US.t often happens that when we’re unable to compre-
hend the simple horrors of everyday life, the mind
turns to conspiracy theories.
When Princess Diana died in a tragic car crash
22 years ago, speculation grew that the royal fam-
ily had conspired to have her killed. The evidence
was thin: vague reports of a mysterious white Fiat
that had grazed her car; accounts of a strange flash
of light just before the crash. The theories — many
pro moted by the billionaire father of the boyfriend
who died alongside Diana — seemed impossibly
complicated, relying on stunts that would be hard to
pull off and have only a distant chance of sending a
car off the road.
Why couldn’t people accept the simplest possible
explanation: that Diana died because her driver had
consumed 10 cocktails and was speeding at twice the
legal limit?
I thought about Diana, a much-loved personality,
after the jail suicide this summer of Jeffrey Epstein,
a truly offensive character. The disgraced investor —
who had long made a show of his friendships with
Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, and
numerous prominent scientists and thinkers — was
accused of sexually abusing dozens of young wom-
en and girls. Once again, the conspiracy theories took
off: surely, some of the powerful people around him
ordered him killed for fear he would expose their
dirty secrets!
Experts can tell you why this is implausible — how
the kinds of charges Epstein faced gave him little rea-
son to rat out his friends; how difficult it would be to
bribe the number of jail guards necessary to pull off
such a plot and the impossibility of keeping it secret.
I just look to the principle of Occam’s razor, which
states that the more assumptions you must make to
build your theory, the less likely it is to be true.abandon [E(bÄndEn]
, verlassen, aufgeben
assumption [E(sVmpS&n]
, Mutmaßung, These
billionaire [)bIljE(ne&r]
, hier: milliardenschwer
bribe sb. [braIb]
, jmdn. bestechen
charge [tSA:rdZ]
, Anklage, Beschuldigung
conspiracy [kEn(spIrEsi]
, Ve r s c h wö r u n g s -
conspire [kənˈspaɪ&r]
, hier: hinterhältig betrügen
credibly [(kredEbli]
, glaubwürdigdisgraced [dIs(greIst]
, in Ungnade gefallen
graze [greIz]
, streifen
meddle [(med&l]
, sich einmischen
Occam’s razor [)A:kEmz (reIz&r]
, Ockhams Rasiermesser
(Prinzip der einfachsten Theorie
als plausibelste Erklärung)
plot [plA:t]
, hier: Komplott
pull off [pUl (O:f] ifml.
, zustande kriegen, bewerk-
stelligen
rat sb. out [rÄt (aUt] ifml.
, jmdn. verpfeifenJeffrey Epstein was a man whose facade had
come crashing down. His friends and fortune had
abandoned him and he was almost certainly going
to spend the rest of his less-than-soulful life in prison.
Of course, he wanted to die.
Conspiracies do exist. Actual Russian agents have
been credibly charged in the plot to meddle in the
US elections, despite President Trump’s attempt to
laugh it all off as a crazy theory. And Epstein himself
conspired to attract young women and girls with the
promise of jobs, and to get wealthy men to hand over
their money to him.
But still we want a more complex explanation.
How could an icon like Diana die so meaninglessly
— in something as ordinary as a car crash? And how
could Epstein, a bad man finally brought down, deny
us the satisfaction of his trial and punishment? We
tell ourselves stories about how the world works. It
doesn’t matter if the endings aren’t happy. We just
want them to have meaning.