Working with a Black Box Problem and Star Trek

The job of computer scientists, of course, is to design the programs that let electronic computers accomplish those impressive feats of thinking and knowing. The computer scientists have to figure out how to make programs that get to the right kind of output from the right kind of input. But our job as cognitive psychologists is rather different and even harder. We are more like archaeologists than engineers. Actually, it's a familiar Star Trek story. We have landed on a planet that already...