MH370 and “reverse Ockham’s Razor”

Last updated on: March 17, 2014 at 7:36 pm by Jane the Actuary

MH370 and “reverse Ockham’s Razor” 2014-03-17T19:36:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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OK, I’ve never heard that expression, and I’m not really intentionally trying to coin a new phrase. But you know what Ockham’s Razor is about — the idea that, all other things being equal, you should choose the explanation for an event that’s the simplest. And why the situation with the vanished Malaysian flight feels like Ockham’s Razor in reverse is this:

People have speculated that the pilots had planned a 9-11 type attack on some kind of target. But in such a case, why would they have, apparently, landed the plane somewhere, with the intent to refuel and take off again for their nefarious ends? Why would they not have simply crashed the plane into its target right away?

People have also speculated that the pilots intentionally crashed the plane as an act of terrorism. But the whole point of terrorism is induce a feeling of terror in your enemies, by leaving them insecure, knowing, in this instance, that no flight is safe. Accordingly, terrorism, to be effective, requires announcing to the world that this was, in fact, a terrorist event.

Perhaps this was some kind of mass kidnapping? That would mean either that these people are being held hostage for ransom, with no ransom demand, or being held as some kind of slaves, equally improbable.

Was this “suicide by plane crash”? There were two pilots, so they’d either both have to be suicidal, or one would have had to have overpowered the other. And, even though I can’t say much about the culture in which these men lived, I can’t see someone who’s suicidal deciding to take a whole planeload of people with him. Besides which, why continue to fly for so many hours in that case? In the one actual instance of “suicide by plane,” EgyptAir 990, the crash occurred shortly after take-off.

Was this a plane theft? To what end? A Boeing 777 seems entirely unsuited to the task of providing transportation for some criminal group; a smaller jet would seem to be a much better choice, given the runway requirements, maintance issues, etc., of a jumbo jet.

So in each of these instances — 9-11 attack, intentional crash for terror purposes, mass kidnapping, suicide, “plane theft” — this mysterious disappearance of the plane would be a pretty lousy way of accomplishing the goal, so that makes these theories improbable. Hence, “Ockham’s Razor in reverse.”

My personal guess? It was intended to be a “lone wolf” 9-11 style attack, but all their attempts to fly literally under the radar meant that they unintentionally crashed into the sea rather than their intended target.

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