The four-point trim is nothing new. I shod performance horses that way for 25 years, mostly because I was taught by someone who had shod performance horses for 25 years before me. It didn't have a name then, but it did have 50 years of success with some of the best horses in the world. And granted, a few horses could probably skate through life barefooted. But the fact of the matter is that I've never seen a feral horse win an under-saddle class and if I needed to get from Seattle to Portland before the next millennium, my horse better be packing something more than his birthday suit.
Theories are fine.
In fact they are educational. We are never going to achieve that mystical ideal in our work, because it simply does not exist. We manage the genetic junkyard that domestication invariably produces. Our success lies in digging through the assorted parts and finding something that works on a particular horse on a given day. And wishful thinking or recycled wishful thinking is not going to change that fact.