[meheleventyone]

I don't think criticizing the repetitive nature is absurd but maybe it's fruitless. My meta point isn't really to make people feel bad about taking part in these debates but to question whether we can get more out of them.

And whilst I agree that new people learning about things can be an effective trigger for rehashing these arguments I don't think all the people who so happily engage in them are new to the argument. In fact I think the constant rehashing of them is mostly the cause of new people learning about the argument in the first place. So in that sense they could be useful (if the argument is actually useful).