Pair programming is great to get junior people or people just coming in up to speed.
If you put me and another senior next to each other to use just one computer and make us do that consistently, we would both quit the job by friday. Pair programming is a great way to cut your productivity in half (2 people doing the job of one). We trust each other anyway, there's no point in watching each other like hawks. We can just do our own thing and then CR the other guy.
Pair programming is another one of those schemes employed to make people feel pressured into not slacking under the pretense of it being new and edgy and kinda cool. Its great, nobody ever slacks. You just burn out within months.
If you don't think pair programming is retarded, please ask a welder how he would feel about pair-welding. Complete and utter bullshit.
^ I'm talking about professionals. Not brogrammers. Not node.js clowns. Those people could all use some supervision. But sticking two great engineers with lots of experience together like that will jsut reduce productivity and will to live.
