1. The author seems to "mysticize" tradition, basically taking the approach "sometimes you just have to take things on faith". Which I think is complete nonsense. If you look at the traditions that "work", like the manioc processing given in the article, this is basically just the scientific method at work, but where we've lost the documentation. That is, people in the past surely did do trial and error to find out what processing works best, e.g. someone likely boiled the tapioca first to see that it lost its bitter taste, and then later others probably determined if they further processed it that it had fewer side effects (e.g. less bloating) that had long term benefits. But the important point is we should be glorifying the scientific method of trial and error here, not the "losing the documentation" part that the author wants us to do. As a close analogy, many many flight rules and regulations are born out of past tragedies, where something went wrong, we analyzed the root cause, and then came up with rules to prevent those causes. If we suddenly lost all the documentation and history as to why we built those rules in the first place, we would call it "tradition", but we would still be worse off compared to when we had a deeper, rational understanding of why we created those rules.
2. As others have pointed out, if "tradition is smarter", we'd also still be foot-binding in China, female circumcision wouldn't be questioned as the mutilation that it is, and slavery would be an acceptable form of division of labor. There are tons of traditions that are total shit, and were just propagated because they served to reinforce the power structures that existed at the time.
Traditions deserved to be questioned. Those that are worth keeping should stand up to rational inquiry.