"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen"
About this Quote
Hawking’s line is a sly rebuttal disguised as a shrug. Einstein’s famous complaint about quantum mechanics - that “God does not play dice” - wasn’t really theology; it was a demand for a universe that behaves politely, with hidden gears turning beneath apparent randomness. Hawking answers with a grin sharpened into a provocation: not only are the dice real, but sometimes the table is off-limits.
The intent is double-edged. On the surface, he’s defending quantum indeterminacy: some outcomes are not predetermined, not merely unknown. The deeper move is aimed at the comforting compromise many people (and many physicists) reach for: maybe reality is deterministic, and we just don’t have the right information yet. Hawking’s “where they cannot be seen” punctures that hope. It gestures toward horizons, censorship built into the cosmos - places where information doesn’t just hide, it’s structurally inaccessible. In Hawking’s intellectual neighborhood, that means black holes, event horizons, and the tension between quantum theory and general relativity that produced the black hole information paradox.
What makes the quote work is its rhetorical theft: it borrows Einstein’s own metaphor and escalates it. “Dice” is already an argument about humility; Hawking turns it into an argument about limits. The subtext isn’t “physics is random” so much as “physics denies you the spectator’s seat.” In a culture that treats science as a machine for total clarity, Hawking offers a more bracing promise: understanding may include accepting that some of the universe’s most important throws happen out of view.
The intent is double-edged. On the surface, he’s defending quantum indeterminacy: some outcomes are not predetermined, not merely unknown. The deeper move is aimed at the comforting compromise many people (and many physicists) reach for: maybe reality is deterministic, and we just don’t have the right information yet. Hawking’s “where they cannot be seen” punctures that hope. It gestures toward horizons, censorship built into the cosmos - places where information doesn’t just hide, it’s structurally inaccessible. In Hawking’s intellectual neighborhood, that means black holes, event horizons, and the tension between quantum theory and general relativity that produced the black hole information paradox.
What makes the quote work is its rhetorical theft: it borrows Einstein’s own metaphor and escalates it. “Dice” is already an argument about humility; Hawking turns it into an argument about limits. The subtext isn’t “physics is random” so much as “physics denies you the spectator’s seat.” In a culture that treats science as a machine for total clarity, Hawking offers a more bracing promise: understanding may include accepting that some of the universe’s most important throws happen out of view.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
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