Okay then lets engage:

>Because the colors are just an abstraction. They don't mean that the state is literally that color.

Do you mean that an abstraction has informative value or not?Do you think the color can improve / reduce the user experience?

>Having disjointed colors for a continuous gradation makes no sense

Brown to green is not disjointed. It is representative. It shows bad to good and makes the map readable without the need to compare the color for each area you are looking at.

But the more interesting part now is, which of your opinions do you have? Does the color have information? Or does it not. Because in this point, your comments (seem to) disagree with each other. That is why I asked.