The Principle of Proportional Ink

Reading Response: by Jonathan Melendez Davidson

I can help but wonder how much of this is just purely 'masturbatory'? I do agree that the ink has to equal the value being represented but when the article commences talking about the perspective of the 3D bar chart and how it doesn't represent the exact value of the chart in those cases I truly wonder if general audience would actually see a difference, better yet understand a difference.
What if the Data sources available are not 100% true. Seeing these examples and reading this article they represent and try to communicate the reality of one specific set of data. Well what if that data is wrong, what is the point of representing it correctly? What if there are multiple data sources which all have different numbers, then which one do we select as designers to represent?
This article is giving me a feeling of what their ideal view of the designer is. "the medium through which data (#'s) are translated" as if the designer were sort of this automata without pre-existing constructed biases and opinions. I say this respecting the act of communicating the 'real' and/or factual information, but this translation from # to visual is already an abstraction which doesn't necessarily lie but truly are just an abstraction of the reality which they represent, a language by which to communicate. IDK this is more of a rant than a question but ... (tbd)