In my situation I'm grasping a handful of utensils blindly (they're under soapy water), some which are knives. I can pull them up and sort them out w/o damage. Why?
The hand, and the combination of hand + eye, are remarkably facile. But in a suds-filled sink the eye is useless and the hand alone governs.
Of course, we don't have to live quite that dangerously ;-)
If knives were to instantly cut on touch, blindly groping for them in the suds would be way too dangerous. (And I haven't really ever gotten cut that way either, so go figure)
While washing dish utensils through my life I have observed something I thought was truly surprising and unexplained. Can't we focus on that?
To be fair I honestly did think that that was the part that was mystifying you. Sorry about that.
I guess you're focusing more on the neural-network self-learning going on? Or... what's the interesting part to you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwuQPfvSSlo (Extreme example: At one point in time, people would sometimes hold sharp swords by blade -in the middle of a swordfight - and win!)
To cut something you need sharp object + cutting motion. No cutting motion means no effect.
I say relatively safe; because of course you're putting yourself in a position where you theoretically can get hurt if you accidentally loosen your grip.