A two black box problem. Like a string of pearls when neither object of study nor methodology is transparent. The metaphorics of transparency are sometimes refractory. Without due recourse to the source of the lighting, the metaphorics of transparency privilege knowledge in the synoptic mode. If neither glass box nor not-glass box receives no illumination, the difference is moot.
History is built of a mix of senses and a braid of time.
I'm sure many glasses will be half full and half empty and emptied and refilled before the question of the nature of containers and contained is settled. I just hope we here who will not be there then got to hear by here reading reports. Until fairly recently, I was fairly skeptical about a lot of the statistical methods being used in Natural Language Processing because they do seem to be 'black box' methods. But in the last couple of years, I have changed my mind, after investigating the results and learning more about the methods. It is an interesting phenomenon in that the researchers themselves often understand the statistical methods well, but not why they show the results that they do.