This is a great technique, and an excellent essay describing it. I found it enjoyable to read.

I wonder, though, if the author failed to pinpoint the likely cause of this effect. Yes, I believe that there is an element to it that involves signaling alpha security in a non-verbal way, and another element to it where the sheer rarity of your speech raises its perceived value.

But consider this, which I suspect may be the dominating force at play: if you follow the author's algorithm and only speak if you feel as though saying nothing will have greater cost in the future to put things back on the rails, what are you doing if not filtering out the lower-quality, lower-urgency, and lower-importance thoughts that you might otherwise utter. I believe that the effect of this is that if you only utter the crème de la crème of your thoughts, then people end up suspecting that you're more brilliant than you actually are. At the very least, people will come to learn that if you have something to say, it will likely be well worth their attention.

It's simply a matter of keeping your lower-quality thoughts as the part of an iceberg submerged below the surface.