Rather than taking some arbitrary definition of black boxes and then arguing about whether they apply, you’ve recognised that a phrase can be understood in many ways, and we should use the word in whatever way most helps us in this discussion. That’s exactly the sort of rationality technique we should be learning.
A different way of thinking about it though, is that we can remove the confusing term altogether. Rather than defining the term “black box”, we can try to remember why it was originally used, and look for another way to express the intended concept.
In this case, I’d say the point was:
“Sometimes, we will use a tool expecting to get one result, and instead we will get a completely different, unexpected result. Often we can explain these results later. They may even have been predictable in advance, and yet they weren’t predicted.”
Computer programming is especially prime to this. The computer will faithfully execute the instructions that you gave it, but those instructions might not have the net result that you wanted.
I like this style of reasoning.
Rather than taking some arbitrary definition of black boxes and then arguing about whether they apply, you’ve recognised that a phrase can be understood in many ways, and we should use the word in whatever way most helps us in this discussion. That’s exactly the sort of rationality technique we should be learning.
A different way of thinking about it though, is that we can remove the confusing term altogether. Rather than defining the term “black box”, we can try to remember why it was originally used, and look for another way to express the intended concept.
In this case, I’d say the point was: “Sometimes, we will use a tool expecting to get one result, and instead we will get a completely different, unexpected result. Often we can explain these results later. They may even have been predictable in advance, and yet they weren’t predicted.”
Computer programming is especially prime to this. The computer will faithfully execute the instructions that you gave it, but those instructions might not have the net result that you wanted.