

Why some smart people are reluctant to share? - nishantmodak
http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/2009/12/26/why-some-smart-people-are-reluctant-to-share/

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ams6110
Without making any claims on my level of "smartness", I will say that I tend
to shut down pretty quickly when it becomes apparent that the person I'm
"sharing" with is really just more interested in me doing his job for him.

~~~
gaius
Yes, when I was young and just starting out, the older DBAs and SAs often
seemed reluctant to help out the developers or the users with ad-hoc requests.
The DBAs in particular would just run a script they were given and send the
dev the output, even if that output was just an error. I thought this was a
bit poor, aren't we all on the same team? But, when I started to help people I
soon found the truth. Either you were like that, or you spent the whole time
debugging other people's stuff, doing work they couldn't be bothered to do,
you'd spend ages working on a report or a feature and then the person who
wanted it would say, oh, sorry, I don't need that anymore.

It's human nature. Something that is given freely has no value. Now I only
trade time and knowledge with equals.

~~~
nostrademons
I've found that how you ask makes a big difference in how likely you are to
get an answer. For example:

1.) On a mailing list, listing things you've already tried and other resources
you've already read makes people more inclined to answer you. It shows that
you're serious about solving the problem and just need a little help to get
there, and keeps them from having to play 20 questions with what you already
know.

2.) If you're asking a coworker to do something, ask if you can watch. They'll
figure that you'll be able to do it yourself next time.

3.) In all cases, fundamental questions seem to be more useful than specific
questions. "Where's that log data kept? How do I get access to it? What format
is it in?" is more useful than "Can you look up who was scraping our server at
10:40 PM yesterday for me?", because the former lets you solve a whole class
of problems by yourself, while the latter just takes care of the immediate
need.

~~~
skmurphy
nostrademons suggestions are a great way to mark yourself as someone trying
both to improve and not waste another's time.

I had blogged about how to ask an expert for help in
[http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/12/12/how-to-ask-an-
expert...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2007/12/12/how-to-ask-an-expert-for-
help/) and suggested a couple more depending upon context. Robert Kelley in
"How to Be a Star at Work" had these broader for novices in a new environment:

o Build your network before you need it, if possible.

o Be very mindful of people’s time and don’t waste it.

o Give careful thought to how you phrase your request or question.

o Summarize your attempts to solve the problem or find the information you as
asking for help with.

o Verbally thank and follow up in writing, publicly credit.

------
elblanco
This is an interesting theory. But I tend to be of the school that thinks that
there are two kinds of smart people: people that think they are smart and
aren't, and people who are smart (but tend to not think so).

The former are usually a result of the Dunning–Kruger effect. In my experience
these people think that being smart (competent) makes them special and gives
them a kind of power. Thus they don't want to diminish their own power by
yielding some of it to other people. The funny thing is that they usually
don't actually know anything anyways.

The later are usually a result of what I like to think of as the Socrates
effect "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I
know nothing." They believe that what they know isn't worth much because they
realize that what they know is a single drop in the ocean of knowledge. They
tend not to want to share because they might be embarrassed by the pittance of
their knowledge -- even if it's worth quite a bit.

I've found ultimately that sharers of knowledge have overcome their own egos
and have dealt with the fear that drives both motivations. In either case they
usually expect some kind of reciprocity and openness (but it's not required).

~~~
weaksauce
The second kind of reasoning is inline with PG's statement about hackers:

 _I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced
of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so
incompetent._

From: Great Hackers, <http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html>

~~~
notauser
'If I have seen further than others, it's because I am surrounded by dwarfs.'
-- attributed to Murray Gell-Mann

(I generally prefer Newton's version, and I'll aspire to be so humble until my
achievements better his.)

~~~
btilly
Did you know that Newton's version was written to a dwarf (Robert Hooke) who
had accused Newton of taking his ideas?

It is ironic that this pointed insult has become seen as a sign of his
intellectual generosity.

~~~
tokenadult
Interesting. That prompted me to look at the online references

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Fame>

and learn about the personality disputes among scientists of that era.

------
Locke
I think this observation is very true with respect to sharing with the
internet at large. It's easy to dismiss some new (personal) discovery as
unremarkable or obvious -- but, there are probably people out there who would
find a write-up of that discovery interesting. This is probably especially
true about more domain-specific bits of knowledge.

In that case, I don't think _not_ sharing is an intentional choice to withhold
or hoard information. The individual simply didn't realize there was any
demand for that information. Or, perhaps there wasn't enough value in that
information because anyone with an interest would make the same discovery on
their own easily enough.

It doesn't mean that the same individual wouldn't share that info with someone
who asked _directly_ about the subject.

~~~
Locke1689
I find this true not on the Internet more often. For example, one of my
friends asked me to describe what I was working on and how it worked. I was
perfectly willing to get him up to speed -- until I realized what I was
stepping into. My current project was designing and implementing a hardware
virtualization support layer. One of the reasons why I was so reluctant to
help him was I realized exactly what kind of "background information" (as the
article says) I was using in the project.

First, I would have to teach him how virtualization and virtual machine
monitors work. But before that, I would have to teach him how modern operating
systems work. Well, before that I would have to teach how modern hardware
works. Even if we get through all that I'd still have to teach him IA32e
assembler and POSIX standard C (he only knew C++). After realizing that, I
told him I'd help if he took a couple more courses and later decided he still
wanted to know. In this case I would have to say that I _did_ intentionally
withhold information, but only because I didn't want to give an incomplete
picture.

P.S. You stole my username ;)

------
noonespecial
I've also found that once a person has attained a certain amount of knowledge,
sharing it with others becomes an awful lot like telling them that _they're
wrong_. People don't like to hear that they are wrong about things. Sometimes
people just don't _want_ to know what they don't know. Its just easier that
way.

Sharing can be hard, socially risky work. It often requires a great deal of
tact, even when the knowledge is asked for.

------
fnid
There was this one guy, he had a gun and he'd hunt with it. One day, another
guy came along and they started hunting together. Eventually, the guy with the
gun shared the gun with the other guy who then shot the gun owner and took all
the food.

~~~
dnewcome
I don't think that your parable of the gun is quite analogous to sharing
knowledge. Most knowledge is not zero-sum, and sharing the `background'
thinking helps the sharer and the sharee both. At best, your analogy would
have to be modified such that the gun was somehow replicated, giving them the
ability to have a duel at least.

~~~
Perceval
I saw a quote somewhere that read, "A knowledge economy is a secret society."
Ideally knowledge isn't zero-sum. In practice, knowledge is power, and power
is zero-sum.

~~~
randallsquared
There are two types of power: ability to do things and control over people.
The latter is zero-sum, but the former is not. Knowledge always increases the
ability to do things, but (depending on who has it) may increase or decrease
control over others.

------
rincewind
_Why some smart people are reluctant to share? [...] Note: This is about smart
people who are not sharing enough. So please don’t generalize this about all
smart people._

Easy! Smart people who do not share are not sharing enough by definition.

------
strait
Asking this question is a good place to start, but the answer goes way beyond
mere reluctance. I would say that many people are very intelligent in ways
that outstrip their ability to communicate this knowledge effectively. Natural
written languages are very blunt instruments in contrast to the highly-
involved abstract concepts that our brains are capable of 'discovering'. Some
things are very difficult to explain effectively and take much patience,
forethought, style, and lengthy prose. Fewer are talented in this area, or you
might say that certain skill sets intersect less frequently. (Talented writers
and talented mathmeticians/scientists). Even great professors often struggle
with explaining things in layman's terms.

Take the English laguage, for example. Very flexible, but still feeble at
tranferring highly abstract concepts. It wasn't designed/evolved for this
purpose, so this is not surprising. Talented writers can get quite far on the
abstraction scale, before text becomes a verbose and confusing mess, but there
must exist a potential space for a future spoken/written language to be
created, better suited for explaining abstractions, somewhere between the
current common natural languages and terse mathematical notation (which itself
requires much textual explanation).

~~~
dbz
I see your point and I'll add to it. Along with difficulty in producing an
explanation, there is difficulty in allowing the other person time to
understand. -> This requires patience, and a lot of people I consider smart
have very little patience, which makes it hard for them to explain things and
often times I will see them stop explaining something to someone, or simple
not starting the explanation because they view it is a lost cause.

~~~
strait
Yes, imagine being so intelligent that after 5 seconds of interaction with
someone, you will mentally accurately predict a 6.8 percent chance (+/- 2)
that they will eventually pick up on what you are explaining at all. So, now
after 10 times with a 5 percenter, you one day realize there was less than
half a chance all along, and get into a severe lonely depression and
eventually end up writing highly obscure technical books that the
sensationalistic bloggers will never read, leading them to blog about 'all
those selfish and silent smart people.'

------
amutap
I think the author is confused between knowledge and wisdom. I dont make any
claims that i am smart but say if it takes me certain degree of effort and
time to attain level-4 expertise. Imparting this level-4 expertice to a person
who is at level-0 makes no sense to me.

The level-0 person should go through all the intermidiate levels to make the
things that appear obvious to me, also appear seemless to him/her. Gaining
level-4 expertise will lead them to a mechanical process of understanding.
This is where we cross the line between wisdom and knowledge.

Also, the expert person more often than not is left with a feeling of being
used by someone who attained somthing without any hard work. Things get
complicated from here. My approach is to let the level-0 person give clues
about reaching level-1 and make ways for the person to progress without
complete reliance on me. Some kind of mentoring.

------
sshumaker
Many smart people are too busy doing other things to spend time cultivating a
blog or writing articles. Sharing with your coworkers when the job calls for
it is of immediate utility, and a very different beast than putting your
thoughts onto the internet at large.

------
yason
I don't share my knowledge by answering to questions.

I use my knowledge to support the other guy to find the same answers if he is
willing to do work. I just give him more momentum -- provided he already has
some -- and guide gently to the right direction.

------
bayareaguy
It's my experience that smart people are eager to share whenever the situation
isn't detrimental to them. They know the difference between zero sum and non-
zero sum outcomes and behave accordingly. They are happy to share when they
have reason to believe it is to their advantage and they're just as quick to
avoid fools and scammers.

Perhaps when Mr. Setty encounters smart people unwilling to share with him, he
should take the opportunity to work on his own packaging skills. I think he
may learn that it's rarely easy to make things easy (even for a smart person).

------
tezza
There are also limits to what anyone can describe of their expertise.

See the very important essay on describing expertise :: [http://ist-
socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_socrat...](http://ist-
socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/html/paper_socrates.html)

At competent level ::

"There are just too many situations differing from each other in subtle,
nuanced ways. More, in fact, than can be named or precisely defined, so no one
can prepare for the learner a list of what to do in each possible situation."

------
kvs
Though the two points are reasons for someone to not share, the other reason
could very well be that a person is an introvert by nature.

Another article linked by Rajesh (Marshall Goldsmith on Empowering Others)
raises another possible reason: "one of the problems with smart people is
their need to add a 'lot of value' to the other party." So, someone may think
of sharing something but might think it is not ready yet and keep trying to
increase the value of.

~~~
Psyonic
To me, that's not a problem. I truly believe you should be the signal, not the
noise, so if you're not adding value, what are you doing? Obviously you can
take it too far, but I really don't think this happens all that often,
compared to the plethora of people sharing far too early.

------
amichail
I wonder whether really good startup advice is advice that can only be used a
few times. For example, a publicity stunt to market a product will probably
only work a few times.

If this is the case, one can understand why people are reluctant to share in
this context.

------
k7d
This is somewhat similar to "curse of knowledge" principle described in the
idea stickiness theory book "Made to stick".

Although it's probably one of the symptoms, it's not the most important one.

They don't share because of their EGOS.

~~~
billybob
Maybe. Or maybe it's because of this:

"Smart people want to give their best and as they learn more, they learn that
they need to learn a lot more before they start sharing."

I'd be reluctant to share what I know about, say, website security, because I
have this dim awareness that there are probably lots of things I'm missing,
and anything I post would be flamed to death.

Maybe that's because this is "the knowledge at my current level" that I'm not
ready to share yet.

Or maybe it's because, although I seem to be effective, I secretly fear that
I'm incompetent.

"Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all
doubt."

------
dmoney
One reason to share: all that juicy knowledge in your brain will otherwise be
gone when you die.

------
cia_plant
Knowledge is not a token which can be given away at a whim. It is impossible
to communicate anything profound. If you would like to be smarter, read
philosophy and drop acid.

------
mschy
I'm a self-interested creature. I tend to stop sharing _with the Internet_
when my expertise gets far enough to the right of the mean that the
information flow becomes unidirectional, or near unidirectional.

I doubt I'm alone in that.

~~~
kvs
In my experience sharing helps me understand whether I am going in the right
direction and avoid tunnel vision.

~~~
mschy
If you're able to get such feedback, then the communication is not yet
unidirectional.

