It's not often that you go on the defensive Atari, but it's good to see you have a softer side!
Please be assured that I am not deriding your opinion, just expressing mine.
I understand your argument, and in many ways agree with it, but only in as much as it applies to a musician who wishes to use a guitar in a 'conventional' manner. I apply the term 'conventional' in a very loose way, and would define it as the process of producing sound by the manipulation of strings.
Personally, I find the sound of an acoustic guitar burning on a campfire as interesting as the sound of one being played by a guitar virtuoso.
I enjoy the sound of a stringless electric guitar with a vibrator jammed in the whammy bar springs as much as I enjoy listening to one being played by Carlos Santana or manipulated by Lee Ranaldo.
By your fairly narrow definition of what constitutes the playing of a guitar, a stringless guitar cannot be tuned, and therefore cannot be played - this is obviously not the case.
The sounds that I have produced over the years using guitars have rarely required them to be strung or tuned, or even touched, but they were played nonetheless. Sometimes to destruction.
So I agree with you that if you're intending to play a guitar in the conventional manner then yes, a basic grasp of chord structures is probably a good thing.
But if your intention is never to play chords, then learning them would be a waste of time.