PhronesisChronic information-hoarding is the compulsion to strategically withhold knowledge, contacts, resources, or insights that could benefit others. We model it as a wrong attractor W in the Phronesis dynamical framework, a basin of behavior opposite to the ground state S^0 of calibrated generous disclosure. The paper introduces the Selective-Withholding Architecture (SWA): the cognitive and social mechanisms by which agents retain information not from legitimate confidentiality but from irrelevance-anxiety — the fear that once others have the knowledge, the holder becomes dispensable.
The SWA operates through an indispensability calculus, a running cost-benefit computation that assigns hoarding value to each piece of information proportional to perceived scarcity and perceived threat. We characterize the Free-Sharing Foreclosure Basin (FSFB): the set of reinforced habits and relational climates that make generous knowledge transfer feel dangerous or irrational.
Nine propositions trace the phenomenology, costs, distinguishing marks, and corrective trajectory of chronic hoarding. The return to S^0 requires the unhedged knowledge transfer — a deliberate act of sharing without strategic reservation — and sustained practice of a generous-default norm. The key stability result is the Abundance Paradox: generous sharing increases rather than decreases the sharer's actual relevance, dissolving the anxiety that originally licensed withholding.