My suggestion that the Black Box of the mind is “nearly empty at birth” has been challenged.
First: I am quite happy with the idea that an adult personality is defined by both Nature and Nurture in a ratio not a million miles from 50%.
So I do acknowledge the vast contribution of our nature to the experience of our lives, beyond what is learned in our own lifetime.
However I want to distinguish between the significance of the effect, and the raw information input leading to that effect.

There is a big difference between inherited data and most learned data:
Inherited data has been refined over millennia and largely optimised for survival of the species
We might therefore expect inherited data to be incredibly efficient in terms of ultimate value per bit (just as the small information input to a Fractal program can lead to incredibly rich landscapes.) Inherited data probably provides the very basis of our mechanism for perceiving things, (however it is not the source of 50% of WHAT we perceive).
Inherited data has been optimised for the role of humans over many many thousand of years, so will be primarily about physical survival in the world, (as opposed to memorising the works of Shakespeare)

Learned data is often of low value per bit (train spotting information, integrated circuit identification codes) and only gains significance when related to previously learned information and conceptual models.
The amount of novel data presented to a science graduate throughout their education is quite large, and may have quite low value per bit, especially if not successfully integrated into some internal models (c.f. Richard Feynman’s description of the Brazilian method of learning Physics; By Rote).

So to Summarise, our Black Box is nearly empty at birth but comes with a few incredibly valuable jewels at the bottom, (which may become somewhat buried in useless information later!)

PS I don’t think an engineering approach to the mind will ever describe it as it truly is, yet I do believe that we can gain interesting insights by standing back and asking what an alien might make of our claimed capabilities. An “almost empty mind” needs no defending. It is a system with capabilities way beyond anything that man has made.
Richard