People spend a lot of time demonstrating their sexual fitness for reproduction by displays of prowess. It's just what we do. Intellectuals and engineers aren't exceptions, they're often very naive about this tendency and the biological roots of it. I agree there. I've sometimes said that universities are very important because they teach people to meet the irrational demands of cloistered professors in order to succeed; thus preparing them for business. But there are times, you would probably agree, when you have to argue strenuously for engineering problems to be funded for engineering reasons, before they crash the business. Building a bomb because that's what management said they wanted isn't what you're paid for either.