A lot of the ‘learned blankness’ or black box problem (I prefer that) seems to me to be directly related to how afraid someone is of feeling (or worse, looking) stupid.
There are exceptions of course, but by and large the people that seem to hit that wall (or, at least have a higher than average number of those walls to hit) are people that were told over and over that they’re dumb, or that pursuing ‘X’ is dumb.
And—they become that, or at least an unreasonable facsimile thereof. Within the realm of their expertise it’s very obvious they’re highly intelligent, but they either assume they are just as much an authority in unrelated realms without actually educating themselves in that realm, or they get out of their comfort zone and they stop—two divergent attempts to attempt to avoid looking dumb.
I’m convinced the average IQ is actually 300+ and we simply evoke it more and more as we’re less and less afraid of feeling stupid.
Jonnan
This is one of those philosophical arguments where the premise is so absurdist as to make it impossible to take seriously, but at the end of the day I’m far less inclined to kowtow to the British example than the Islam.
Restricting an image is, at it’s heart, restricting thought. Restricting nerve impulses and the way they interact with the brain. The Islam restriction is, to an extent, silly in this day and age—there are no pictures of Mohammed, therefore there can be no pictures of Mohammad; You can’t commit that ‘sin’ anymore than you can commit the sin of operating heavy machinery while deceased.
Unless I go to the trouble of labelling, you can’t even know I tried
O
/|\ <-- May or may not be Stick Man representation of Mohammad in XKCD
/ \
We obtain data from pictures, and the blow to nature photographers, is hardly the issue. Think about the problems regarding ecologists, wildlife preservationists, biologists, fisherman, et al.
As a matter which impinges upon no impulse to do so past contrarily labeling stickmen, of course I can politely consent not to draw Mohammed. Not photographing Salmon causes active harm.
Jonnan