What does a 14th-century philosopher have to do with assessing the reasonableness of current conspiracy theories? William of Ockham (1285-1347) is credited with the basic principle that, other things being equal, simpler explanations are to be preferred. Termed “Occam’s razor,” the idea is also known as the rule of parsimony, which favors the least complicated explanation. There is an intuitive appeal to the idea that simpler is better, that the more assumptions and factors that go into an explanation the less credible it is.

Let’s take an example. Donald Trump recently claimed that the crowd at a Harris event at the Detroit Airport was AI-generated, that “no one was there.” The alternative explanation was that a large group had assembled to greet the vice president upon her arrival.

Trump’s claim would require that everyone in the vice president’s entourage, including the airport workers who met her plane, were party to a deception and no one reported the fraud. It would require that video of her arrival was, in real time, edited to add a fake crowd. It would also require explaining away the many photographs and videos that the actual participants shot at the event. Applying Occam’s razor, it is easy to see why Trump’s unsubstantiated claim should be dismissed.

Perhaps the best example of the utility of Occam’s razor is Trump’s repeated claim that the 2020 election was stolen. The competing explanation is that the election followed the laws of the 50 states and that Joe Biden ended with the required number of Electoral College votes. Trump’s interpretation would require a staggering amount of evidence of election fraud and of an underlying national conspiracy.

It would also demand that the many court cases brought to challenge individual state results, including appeals to Trump-appointed judges and to the Trump-friendly Supreme Court, were part of the same conspiracy. It would require us to believe that thousands of election workers engaged in an orchestrated manipulation of results, produced by a variety of election methods, to favor Biden. The other explanation only requires that we credit the election with having gone normally. The razor chooses the simpler explanation.

An obvious question remains: Why are so many Americans willing to believe accounts that are so clearly at odds with far simpler explanations? The answer lies in a concept more familiar to literary and cinematic experiences.

Books and movies ask us to “suspend disbelief” to follow along with the plot, even if it tells a story far removed from our ordinary reality. Characters engage in feats that we would never expect to see in daily life, action occurs in invented worlds that are sometimes pure fantasy, unlikely coincidences favor the hero/heroine, and endings are always happy.

We go along with the stories because they are entertaining and because they express what we wish were true: that evil is always vanquished by good, that the underdog always triumphs against all odds, that the deathly ill experience medical miracles. Trump’s lies are appealing not because they make sense, or are logically compelling, but because they confirm the suspicions of many that there is an “enemy” responsible for all that gets in the way of their living the lives they want to live.

By naming and condemning that “enemy” – immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, crooked politicians, women demanding equality, etc. – his lies feed into deep-seated fears and frustrations without demanding reason. They displace blame for misfortunes and failures and offer redemption as the happy ending.

Occams’ razor is blunt in the face of this emotional impulse to suspend disbelief. If you want something to be true badly enough, it doesn’t matter how unlikely it is or how many far simpler explanations are available. Preferring Trump’s many fabricated accounts are more a matter of wish than reason. Just as we feel better when fiction concludes with satisfying endings, those who most want to escape into a world where grievances are voiced and retributions are promised will resist any appeal to logic.

Donald Joralemon is an emeritus professor at Smith College.