<rant>
"Don't open village, because it's always useless on the second shuffle" is an important strategy lesson that's usually true, and the exceptions to it are sufficiently rare that a beginner would be wise to ignore them.
HOWEVER, it doesn't follow logically from "village is never useful on the second shuffle" that "you never want to open village." Yes, OK, the second shuffle is insanely important, and so it does normally turn out this way. However, the cards you buy on turns one and two aren't just there in the second shuffle. They're also with you for the rest of the game. Village/horse traders in a torturer game, as was said above, is a great example where you just really don't want that silver.
Tangential subrant: I have also argued elsewhere that in ambassador games where no village costs less than 4, an ambassador/worker's village or especially ambassador/walled village opening is fantastic. People disagreed, but I think they were wrong. I don't trust councilroom.com data on this, because a lot of people opening ambassador/walled village are new to the game, haven't heard the "don't open village rule," and thus will likely also be worse at playing the ambassador. The fact of the matter is that even Ambassador/_ is a pretty good opening, the point being that _ , in a sense, cycles the deck...
</rant>
