This is a hit piece. Maybe there are legitimate criticisms in there, but it tells you right off the bat that it’s egregiously untrustworthy with the first paragraph:
I like to think of the Bay Area intellectual culture as the equivalent of the Vogons’ in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Vogons, if you don’t remember, are an alien species who demolish Earth to build an interstellar highway. Similarly, Bay Area intellectuals tend to see some goal in the future that they want to get to and they make a straight line for it, tunneling through anything in their way.
The piece is unfair towards Bay Area Rationalists, but the critiques of Lumina can stand separate from what the author thinks about LW readers. “Haters gonna occasionally make some valid points” and such. Sometimes people who unfairly dislike you can also make valid critiques.
I think it’s a fair point to note that:
Lumina have not done any clinical trials
They circumnavigated the FDA by classifying it as a cosmetic
They aren’t following best practice guidelines for probiotics (granted I don’t actually know how important that is)
This is a hit piece. Maybe there are legitimate criticisms in there, but it tells you right off the bat that it’s egregiously untrustworthy with the first paragraph:
It’s not an entirely unfair characterization.
The piece is unfair towards Bay Area Rationalists, but the critiques of Lumina can stand separate from what the author thinks about LW readers. “Haters gonna occasionally make some valid points” and such. Sometimes people who unfairly dislike you can also make valid critiques.
I think it’s a fair point to note that:
Lumina have not done any clinical trials
They circumnavigated the FDA by classifying it as a cosmetic
They aren’t following best practice guidelines for probiotics (granted I don’t actually know how important that is)