> even though humans are basically black boxes we can ask them questions in order to find out how they came to a particular conclusion. (How reliable the answers to these questions are is of course a different matter.)

You punctuate the second sentence as though it were of secondary importance. But in many cases, we have little ability to figure out how we came to a conclusion, while being much better at fabricating plausible and politically acceptable answers. I put it to you that having questions answered with plausible fabrications, is actually a significantly worse situation than not yet being able to ask the questions at all. At least in the latter situation, we know what we need to be working on.