Yep. Those bromides make sense if you don't think about them.

You run into the same sort of problems with some people who "teach" gun safety who repeat "treat every gun as if it is loaded at all times" again and again.

(You shouldn't clean a loaded gun, so how exactly do you clean a gun if you treat it as loaded?)

Those people shouldn´t teach gun safety. Maybe they should not even be allowed to handle a gun. "at all times" can´t be right. It´s not only the cleaning thing. When you need to shoot, it should be loaded and not just treated as if it is. A "Click" instead of a "Bang" is bad enough on a hunting trip.
The "one is none ..." should just be left in the contexts where it actually makes sense.

They say that because there have been a number of people who have discharged what they thought was an unloaded gun while starting to clean it. You treat it like it is loaded by keeping pointed in a safe direction and keeping your booger picker off the trigger even while you are cleaning it. Its about making habits.

I have to disagree on the "Every gun is always loaded" analogy. I got into guns later in life. That single phrase has made me a safe, conscientious shooter. Whereas, without that phrase, I would have been making more safety mistakes. Even when cleaning a gun, I use the phrase. I treat the gun as if it's loaded until it's disassembled and the objects in front can be accurately described as gun parts, not a gun. Until then, I treat the gun as if it will fire when I pull the trigger.

Actually, I wish more people would use the phrase. I had to stop going to one gun range because the gunsmith seemed to make it a point that he was above the Four Safety Rules. When he was inspecting shotguns, he would point the muzzle in any direction he pleased. Do you understand how uncomfortable and tense that makes the entire environment? He may know the gun is unloaded, BUT I DON'T. How hard is it to treat the gun as if it's loaded and point the darn thing down range? If he would just adhere to the first safety rule alone, the range would not have lost this customer and all my friends.

Along the same lines, I am going to add to my earlier post. I do see the value in the phrase, "One is none, and two is one." The mere existence of this thread proves its value as being memorable. Just don't be a freakin' robot and take it literally always.

If you have to change the rules of math to match your philosophy...

Actually, the rule is: Treat every gun as if it is loaded until you yourself have checked it completely to insure it is empty of any rounds.

BTW: if you walk away, recheck it thoroughly upon your return, before you resume working on it.

Yep this is how I learned, but people just simplified and lost the 2nd part.

It is one of the fundamental commandments of gun safety, in fact. The basic reasoning is there are only two reasons for putting your finger on the trigger of any firearm, regardless of condition:

1. To knowingly and willfully discharge the firearm at an intended target.

2. To test the functionality of the firearm's action, after first clearing the firearm to ensure it is not loaded.

Pulling the trigger on a firearm to check if it is loaded is an unacceptable and illegitimate condition check. When I was in Baghdad, they had discharge barrels at certain checkpoints and facility entries. The purpose of these was to safely disengage the safety on an unloaded gun. You only put the muzzle of the firearm in the aperture of the barrel and pulled the trigger after you had already cleared the weapon. The barrel was a required safety device in case of human error. Lord help you if the gun discharged into the barrel and the sergeant heard it. But if he heard the sear disengage after you passed the barrel, it was your a$$.

Many firearms require to pull the trigger when you want to uncock them. That is one of the reasons I selected a P226 which has an extra lever for it.
Basically you are right. If there is no purpose that requires a finger on the trigger, don´t touch it.

Does looking cool for Hollywood film counts? Because you know it's mandatory as soon as you are handed a gun to put finger on trigger and perhaps aim at something/body.