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That is a useful, balanced way of putting it. Nothing should be mindless. Even if a whole scale run is not used in a work, as it is in many Chopin works, it is useful to have those patterns of fingering well established for even for short runs. A big eye-opener for me was learning the Grieg lyric piece, Butterflies, where I followed for a while the fingering in the score with a lot of stumbling. Then I realised that the short chromatic runs did not follow what I would use for a longer chromatic run. As soon as I switched – no more stumbles.