Things That Stop Working Once You Understand How They Work

Some things seem to work best when we don’t know exactly how they work. A child’s Christmas may lose some of its magic when the kid discovers that Santa Claus is not real. A ritual may feel less sacred once we learn how it was invented (and for which purpose). And, perhaps, a marriage might lose something if we discover that the person who officiated it - say, the taxidermied Cocaine Bear - never had the legal authority to do so.
Some members of our group have coined the word “agnostifunctional” for things whose function depends, at least partly, on ignorance about their underlying mechanism.
How large is this category? Placebos can sometimes work less well when we know they are placebos - although, curiously enough, not always. Stories and illusions often depend on suspension of disbelief. Confidence in institutions, social conventions, or even our own motives might be harder to maintain after examining too closely how the sausage is made. At the darker extreme are information hazards: cases where merely acquiring certain knowledge can make us worse off or create new dangers.
Discussion questions:

• So when is ignorance genuinely beneficial? Is there knowledge we are rationally better off avoiding?
• Can something valuable survive once its mechanism has been exposed - or does understanding inevitably disenchant it?
• If ignorance helps something “work”, should we preserve the ignorance, or regard that as evidence that the thing was never worth preserving?