I believe it's very important to take advantage of one's natural tendencies when at all possible, no matter what element of learning is being approached.

To achieve the goal of sucessfully accomplishing dampening control, I believe one must understand the logic of dampening as well as what must be done to accomplish the task.

The goal is to have a configuration which will allow the dampening of the strings as quickly as possible.

To achieve that goal, the right side of the hand must be very close to the strings to insure instant dampening. It's also important that all the strings are dampened at the same time, therefore evenly distributed hand weight across the width of the strings is very important so as to prevent one string from continuing to ring after others have been dampened.

The most common thing I see which I believe to be deterimental to accomplishing good dampening, is placing excessive weight on the lower strings with the back part of the right hand next to the wrist.

When I see someone playing and the strings being compressed downward toward the pickup, it's an immediate indication to me of inadequate weight distribution which encourages excessive hand movement to dampen the strings, as well as unintended strings continually being heard.

My argument would be that picks against a vibrating string would have a similar effect...plastic finger picks (remember those?) would cause less trouble than metal...pick blocking more so than other right hand blocking methods.

I am a left hand blocker (fingers, thumb, bar lifting et al), seldom pick block to any extent, and use four picks.