> There might be a good reason why smart people want to avoid looking stupid. I’ve spent a long time thinking about what this reason could be. The only plausible explanation is that our egos are fragile, and by not sharing any work at all, we never have to risk our egos being damaged. If we never share anything, then nothing bad can ever happen to us. But the flip side to protecting our egos is that we never end up making anything worthwhile.

This seems oversimplified, since there's a second, unmentioned possibility that somebody doesn't share an idea:

In a capitalist society, people sense there could be monetary potential with their idea, so they sit on it quietly (often never getting around to developing it, etc).

This fear has been amplified in recent years with AI vacuuming up everybody's intellectual property with zero reward. Can't really blame people for doing nothing in such conditions.

And for the commenters complaining about "low/high trust societies," they ought to consider factoring the above into their definition.