I think we do not need to know all the working in order to produce nice images and even very compelling heuristic. In the same way a cat does not know the laws of physics and still is able to navigate quite elegantly through the world.
But I agree our reasoning and understanding is by far not fundamental. And we need to seek for a better understanding.
For me RGB Tonemapping is a lucky accident which worked for a special case, but is by far not fundamental and also quite limiting in terms of achievable looks.
I am happy that ACES 2.0 has moved away from this plateau.