I have been stuck with Carlin's assessment that the reason history rhymes is because it always has the same characters playing in it.

Different setup, same players.

Thus, history can't predict history. But it can tell you a lot of who we are. Kind of like Westworld's theme of capturing one's cognition by registering all your actions in different setups.

It also gives a different perspective on the range of our behavior. When looking at dogs, who evidently show a much more limited range of behavior, we tend to be able to predict how they will react. But when talking about humans, we seem to part from the assumption that our behavior is infinitely complex, when it's not.

Humans operate also within a very limited and mostly defined range of behavior.