My interpretation of your Gears-ness tracks well with the degree to which prior beliefs are interrelated.
Interrelatedness of prior beliefs is useful because it allows for rapid updating on limited information. If I visit another world and find that matches don’t work, for example, I will begin investigating all sorts of other chemical interactions and question how the hell I’m deriving energy, as clearly oxygen doesn’t work the way I think it does any more. I’ll re-evaluate every related prior.
An unrelated prior belief acts like a single gear—an update on it may change the direction of itself, but doesn’t give me other useful information. A highly interrelated prior belief gives me many avenues of investigation in finding what other prior beliefs were wrong, and helps me make more predictions accurately in other contexts.
A sufficiently interrelated prior has many checks on itself; and if you blank a particular belief, if it is still connected to other beliefs you should be able to derive a likely result from the beliefs connected to it.
An aside—I’d really like to give you karma for this post, but I can’t figure out how to do so. Is there some limitation on giving karma?
I’ve recently begun listening to a few bands that are new to me—Parov Stelar, Tape Five, Caravan Palace, and Goldfish. I have found the upbeat tempo of electro-swing to be helpful when I want to improve my mood.