I would reply at length and quote extensively from every section of the book, but 15 years of internet arguments has convinced me there’s really little point an

I would reply at length and quote extensively from every section of the book, but 15 years of internet arguments has convinced me there’s really little point and it would be largely a waste of time. If you can even flip through the pages in a few seconds and come to the conclusion that Tufte doesn’t care about how clearly graphics convey data, there’s really nothing I’m going to say that can convince you. So I’ll just leave it at “bae, you cray-cray”. I can only recommend re-reading the book closely and carefully, ideally spending 5 or 10 minutes really looking at and thinking about each graphic. Maybe start with the first few pages where Tufte lays out his criteria for graphical excellence. You may also want to look at his 2 subsequent books Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations wherein he goes into considerably more detail about particular aspects and techniques statistical graphics can use to show various types of patterns. I have probably spent 50 hours over the years studying Tufte’s four data-viz books, and every time I look I find something enlightening, fascinating, or inspiring. Some individual pages reward 30 minutes or more of careful study. If you can’t find anything useful inside, I don’t know what to tell you.