The mishna says that whenever one of the brothers does business causing the estate to appreciate, we assume that he is doing it for all the brothers unless he stipulates otherwise, or invests his own money to cause the appreciation (gemara). However, R' Safra invested and kept the profits for himself. The gemara justifies this by saying that R' Safra was a great person who would not leave his learning to do business for others, therefore even though he didn't explicitly state that he was expecting to keep all profits, it should have been understood that this was his intent.
The Rambam (Hil. Nachalos 9:5) paskens:
אחד מן האחין שלקח מעות ועשה בהן סחורה אם היה תלמיד חכם גדול שאינו מניח תורתו שעה אחת הרי השכר שלו, שאין זה מניח תורתו ומתעסק לאחיו
The Rambam holds that this halacha should apply today, so long as the brother is the type of person that the younger brothers should assume would only leave his Torah to profit for himself. However, the Nimukei Yosef writes that this halacha isn't applicable nowadays because we don't have people that are of the stature of R' Safra, therefore talmidei chachamim are no different than everyone else since they aren't that deeply involved in their Torah study. He supports this approach with the meforshim in brachos 16a who say that a chasan nowadays isn't exempt from she'ma since the level of kavana deteriorated, the chasan will not be different than others in terms of his ability to concentrate.
The application of the Nimukei Yosef is difficult to understand because this din is not dependent on the objective level of talmidei chachamim. This din is really dependent on the perception of the other brother. If the other brother perceive the one who invested the money to be one who never leaves his studies, then they should have assumed that the was doing it to profit only for himself despite the fact that he has not reached the level of R' Safra?
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