Ricochet

David Hume asks you to imagine that you had never seen before two objects colliding. Although you know everything you know now, you have no understanding of the physics involved in a collision. What might you predict would happen when a moving billiard ball strikes a stationary one? For all you know, a ball traveling north strikes a still ball and bounces southward. Equally as plausible, perhaps both balls move northward after impact. would it be so impossible for the balls, squarely struck as they may have been, to dart off on to the west and one to the east? How profound our ignorance of cause and effect! Had we never experienced physics, we'd never be able to project the state of the world into the future.
I must confess that we have as much a priori predictive power in regards to human affairs as we do the ways of the world. The original situation is merely a thought-experiment (and therefore a matter concerning only academic-types). The latter situations--who must not admit that he is in such a state of ignorance regarding his fellow humans? When we don't allow our biases and prejudices to be active, could we guess which way a person will break when running into a stationary object? (Life is a series of stationary objects that people bounce off of in one way or another.) Will a given person bounce to the right, say to become indignant, after running into a demotion? Or will she instead bounce to the left, say to resign herself to her new position. Will she bounce straight back and attack her boss, or will she continue forward and quit the company? That possibilities are various and the truth is we never know which way a person will break.
Here is a tricky thing about life: we cannot always trust the explanations proffered for one's actions. Take the following example: a certain woman appears generous. You take to observing her. She gives sundry gifts to her friends and family with frequency. She gives beyond her means, always taking wealth from herself and passing it around. She lavishes her circle with fancy cards on top and wrapping paper around the gifts, and often does not even stay near-by to watch them opened. She is pleased at a distance. The onslaught flatters her circle. Whenever she finds herself in an altercation with one of its members, she draws upon her philanthropic activities to mitigate her responsibilities. You watch this and think, she must be after something with all those gifts. Perhaps she wants approval or appreciation. Perhaps she just wants acceptance. Whatever the case may be, the sheer volume of her gift-giving is suspicious. You suggest in passing that she is to some extent "buying the love of others." At this, she explodes. "I have never done anything of the sort! I like being nice to people and showing them how much they mean to me!" Does her response count against your hypothesis? Is the violence with which she retorted further validation? It could be that she is buying the love of others and is not conscious of it. She could know that it would be ill-intentioned to be giving with such motives and thus respond negatively at the accusation. It could be that you have misread the situation. Perhaps the distance she takes after giving is humility.
Is there anything to gain from our own cases? Which way will you break? Don't you know. Ah! You are ignorant even of yourself. Poke and prod as a good scientist does and you chink your own armor.