To understand it, we have to complement scientific, formal knowledge with the ability to enter artistically into the world around us. There is almost always some truth in these proposals. The reason for this is not hard to understand. When it comes to human behavior, we cannot both see a pattern of causation and remain trapped in that pattern exactly as before. The seeing itself is a decisive new element in the pattern.
Statistics offer no counterargument here.
This dynamic between internal transformation and the investigation of controlling influence extends to many areas. On Wall Street, for example, it is well known that every successful effort to gain a marginal leg up on chance by predicting the public's trading behavior quickly cancels itself when the formula becomes common knowledge. For the knowledge itself affects future behavior, and so destroys the formula. Advertisers, relying on the most sophisticated tools of collective manipulation known to man, can sometimes forecast with reasonable accuracy the statistical effect of a particular advertising ploy. In other words, it is the paradoxical hope that we can never know ourselves to be determined.