Fermi’s paradox is fairly well known: given what we know about the chance of intelligent life appearing somewhere in the universe, why haven’t any other species to date so far made contact with humanity? You can formalize the paradox via the Drake equation or some other method, but that’s the crux of it.

What’s less clear is how Enrico Fermi originally phrased the paradox. At Language Log, Mark Lieberman points out that each of the participants in the original conversation remembers it differently:

At lunch, Fermi suddenly exclaimed, “Where are they?” (Teller’s remembrance), or “Don’t you ever wonder where everybody is?” (York’s remembrance), or “But where is everybody?” (Konopinski’s remembrance).

As Liberman writes, “our memory of exact word sequences usually fades more quickly than our memory of (contextually interpreted) meanings. More broadly, the exact auditory sensations normally fade very quickly; the corresponding word sequences fade a bit more slowly; and the interpreted meanings last longest.”

My own favorite (for purely aesthetic reasons) is “where is everybody?” It just kind of says everything you want such an observation to say.

“Where Is Everybody?” or, How Did Fermi Phrase His Paradox?

So who was right, Teller, York or Konopinski? In one sense it’s entirely possible they are all wrong and Fermi actually used a slightly different set of words. But in another sense they are all right because they are all remembering Fermi correctly in that he asked a question that meant this. No one questions the existence of Fermi, or the veracity of his paradox or the stage, setting, historicity of any of it on the basis that his three friends remembered and retold the event slightly differently to each other. And asking the question, ‘which one is right?’ seems to be an exercise in missing the point.

If you read the source account of the conversation which was written in 1985, around 35 years after the event itself we have some revealing comments by the participants.

Konopinski: “I have only a fragmentary recollections about the occasion…I do have a fairly clear memory of how the conversation got started.”
Teller: “My recollection of the event involving Fermi… is clear but only partial.”
York: “who does not recall the preliminary conversation…” does remember Fermi raising the question…

And what’s more we don’t know the precise date. It was either the summer of 1950 or 1951. Or 1952. But probably the summer of 1950.

So in the 20th century among three of physics brightest minds it’s not easy 30 years later to get your dates right. And it’s difficult to remember the precise words of a significant conversation, Yet it remains entirely possible for everybody to believe they are all telling the truth.

The Gospel writers be like:

via GIPHY