Visual and tactile checks I trust. Memory? Of course I think I remember, but there is a rule about treating all guns as loaded for a reason.
If you're so paranoid you won't even trust your own memory to tell you the current condition of the chamber, why would you trust your eyes and/or fingertip? And after performing a check, you immediately begin relying on your memory anyway. You have to "remember" whether you saw/felt a round in there right? If you can't remember from moment to moment what you saw, maybe you
should use an LCI.
Safety checks aren't what we're discussing here right? I think what countzero meant was do you practice feeling for the indicator so that if ever confronted with a situation (such as nighttime intruder) where you need to use your pistol in the dark and don't know what condition it's in, you'll be able to discreetly find out without making any noise or otherwise alerting the BG. That's the only possible situation I can think of when an indicator might be useful. And in that case, visual and/or tactile checks (press checks ETC.) aren't appropriate (or necessary I would hope). If you feel like you can go ahead and open the slide to feel around for bullets without putting yourself in more danger, than by all means...feel away. Hell, why stop there? Why not go ahead and give that thing a good cleaning and lube job while you're at it to make sure everything's gonna' function smoothly. But assuming you need to be as quiet and sneaky as possible to avoid getting shot at, maybe it would be better to know ahead of time what you have in your hand.
In any case, the whole thing's a hopeless situation for lots of reasons. If you don't know whether the chamber's empty or loaded, how can you be sure the magazine's loaded. Or if you even have a magazine inserted. How can you be sure you don't have the action/trigger locked? Or that the you're even holding a real gun for that matter?
But assuming you're crafty enough to know the condition of the magazine well, the magazine, the action/trigger lock and whether your gun is real or not, you're probably also going to know whether you need to rack the slide or not. And if you're serious about self defense and have no kids or other irresponsible people around, I would hope your bedside protection is in ready-to-rock mode. If, on the other hand, you have kids/knuckleheads living with you, I would hope you need to do more than just rack the slide to get your pistol ready for action. Things like: opening the safe or unlocking the action/trigger.
Putting aside things like "always assume it's loaded" and "check the chamber then check it again" Etc., who here doesn't know the EXACT condition of every gun in your collection?
I own several long guns, four revolvers and two pistols. The long guns are all unloaded and locked up. Three of my four revolvers and one pistol are also unloaded and locked. My stainless S&W is currently loaded with 6 Hydroshocks, unlocked and ready to go in my nightstand. My .45 is on my hip, action unlocked, fully loaded (including the chamber), and ready to go with just a flick of the safety. I bet most people on this forum could state the current condition of every firearm they own. And nobody would have to look at any indicators or open any actions. God! At least I
hope so.