A ‘Black Box’ is a hidden, mysterious, or unidentified mechanism that nevertheless reliably produces an effect.
It’s called a black box because to the viewer it seems as though 1) some element(s) existed, 2) then went into this unseeable space, and then 3) emerged mysteriously but predictably changed.
Prior to understanding genes and sexual biology, pregnancy and childbirth were an example of a ‘Black Box’ phenomenon.
Subliminals are, for most of us here on the forum, a kind of Black Box phenomenon.
We get reliable and predictable results, but we are not privy to the mechanisms of effect that bring about those results.
In that kind of situation, it’s reasonable enough that there will arise a range of theories and ideas explaining how the phenomenon may possibly work. And that’s exactly what we see here.
But, even in a black box kind of situation, it’s possible to eliminate certain explanations and mechanisms. We can observe that certain mechanisms or forces are clearly not present. In that case, whatever the actual mechanism is, it’s probably not connected to one of those forces that are demonstrably not involved.
In a similar way, we can use deductive reasoning to reason backwards in a general way about certain factors that must be involved.
(sorry. i start communicating in this fashion (i.e., like a poorly written Arthur Conan Doyle novel or a Victorian scientific paper) when I’m sleep-deprived.)
Here’s the point:
There are two known ingredients involved in a subliminal: 1) a (verbally-encoded) message and 2) a brain/mind that somehow integrates that message. Whatever is going to be achieved must be accomplished by those two ingredients.
Just knowing those two facts alone can help us to think in a more precise way about how subliminals must work.