an oblique way of saying “I have no idea what’s going on here”; used to describe the opacity of processes or logic on which some outcome is based, as in “It’s tough to say what the real drivers of growth are—they’re a black box”; can be used when multifactorial and interdependent causes and effects render the tracing of each one impossible, as with the global economy, weather patterns, etc.; related to a lot of moving parts, which similarly alludes to complexity but without the unknowability of a black box