Is smearing always such a bad thing?

[Steve Broady]

I may be flamed for this, but I'm prepared. It's the cost of asking questions, I suppose. Sometimes they'll be dumb. Let me preface this by saying that I have a few guidelines which I try to follow in all aspects of life, and they've generally served me well:
#1 When there is a long standing tradition, practice, or belief, there's likely a damn good reason for it. Respect that, and try to understand the reason.
-but-
#2 Question everything.
-and-
#3 Don't be afraid to think outside the box.
-but-
#4 Try not to repeat other people's mistakes.

With all that said, in my quest to understand the theory and practice of making good spirits, I have hit upon a question which I hope someone here can help answer. For the sake of argument, let's say we're making whiskey in a pot still. The conventional advice is to do the spirit run low and slow. As I understand it, that's to help prevent smearing heads, hearts, and tails. I get that, I respect it, I have started doing it, i see the difference. So far so good. So we're collecting our entire run in numbered jars, which we will then taste, blend, proof down, and age. If the product is to be consumed white, we are going to make a pretty tight hearts cut. However, this stuff is destined for a barrel. Now, conventional wisdom says that we need to add in some of both the heads and tails in order to add complexity which will only come out after aging. Again, so far so good, makes sense, I'm right there with you.

But wait.. If I'm going to mix in the later heads and the earlier tails (the ones which I've noticed are most likely to have flavors I want to add - feel free to correct me), but I intentionally spent 3-4x as long distilling just to separate those from the hearts, why not just run the still faster, let it smear a bit, and make the cuts on that? Yes, there will be heads in there, but that's the goal. Same for tails. Or am I missing something obvious? I fully respect my position as novice who is likely to miss something any experienced distiller would know.

To be clear, I'm talking about a product which is destined for long aging, and which the distiller knows from experience (and presumably testing) will come out well given a certain level of smearing. Has anyone compared the same recipe (maybe a UJSSM, since it's so popular) made hot and fast vs. low and slow with fairly generous cuts? I can imagine a fairly simple way to test the idea, but I have a feeling there will be opinions and advice aplenty here without the need for more data.