Not every visualized data point is tied to a binary decision.

e.g. when highlighting a quarterly revenue result, there is a big difference between missing the target by 1% or 50% (and of course the absolute number behind it is also important).

And on a larger scale, trajectory is also something that is easily visualized in graphs, and hard to boil down to a binary marker.

There certainly is a lot of "forced synesthesia", and more looking at charts than necessary out there, especially when decisions are then made more from the gut than based on the data one is claiming to base the decisions off, but a culture of binary-based decision making is just as bad of an idea.