Those charts above are built with outdated assumptions about human vision.
This might be true as they don't include the viewing angle and how it affects the image we perceive, as the eye has a certain range where it's able to see very fine details. I agree with you that higher resolution will always be a benefit as it will look smoother, though it isn't really worth much it if you sit 4m away from an 55" TV for example, you will barely see any difference to the 1080p TV, at best you will "feel" the difference as it will look sharper/better with a 4K resolution (well, also depending on your eyesight of course).
There's also one thing to consider I think, we modern day humans are all training our eyes to short viewing distances(smartphones and PCs at work or at home), there are statistics that say most of the population of first world countries will have short vision within the next coming decades. So it makes even more sense to have a TV placed at most 2.5m-3m away from yourself.
The chart holds true for at least 720p and 1080p though, I currently have a 50" Bravia and when I played 720p games on it I was already feeling uncomfortable at about 3m away, which the chart suggests as the minimum distance for such a content. Of cource 720p isn't 720p, a very good bluray encode that is running at 720p could be viewed at 2m too but that's a different story entirely. I also use my TV as a monitor so I get a really clean 1080p signal form my PC for it and I found that the image looks best at around 2-2.5m distance, getting in closer will let me view the pixels, getting away more won't let me see the finer details if there are any. So in this case at least, those graphs do make sense, at least for me.
That said, I will be getting a 4k TV within the next year and it will most likely have about 60" and I'll keep my viewing distance at around 2.5m, I think this will be a pretty big leap in image quality
