Right, if you have a really good friend who just clicks with you pairing is great. But that isn't how pair programming at companies is done, they put you together with some other member of the team and tell you to do work, you didn't choose each other you just happened to be there and now you have to be mentally intimate with each other.

But you are right that voluntary pair programming can be a good thing, so we shouldn't ban programmers from pairing if they want to. But the discussion is whether it makes sense to force programmers to pair program. I really doubt that for example pairing John Carmack and Linus Torvalds would be productive, and that is the kind of personal pairings you get at work.

That's documenting an emergency, all-hands-on-deck response to a crisis.

I absolutely can pair for such an event. I'll pair for knowledge transfer. I'll pair for fun. If every second counts, or if the goal isn't maximum productivity throughput, the sure, pair away.

My point is not that it can't help for world-class developers, but rather that two world-class developers working on routine coding are absolutely not more efficient than two world-class developers working separately.

And people who advocate for pairing typically advocate for 100% pairing. Which can be fun but it won't be more than 2x as productive as two world-class developers working independently.