All subjects are subject to the rules of the dark forest. It used to be possible to, say, go to a scientific conference to present unfinished work, or go online and get feedback on your idea for a fantasy novel. The walls of effort, of old-fashioned normal human effort, were predictable, and scooping ideas required putting in that same effort, and if you got scooped it would at least result in similar insights.
And while insights or generative capacity for the rest of culture is harder to quantify and track than insight from math progress, it still exists, and examples abound (e.g., Tolkien creating the modern fantasy genre). People used to say: “We’re a start-up in stealth.” Now all thinking must be in stealth.