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I agree. But if we engaged in a debate about 'is welfare good', we could nail down the primary benefit (marginal utility, increasing total welfare), and then move onto potential countervailing issues - you'd probably agree that there are that and 0-5 other general things that make welfare potentially bad, and then we could go into detail on those.
Sure, but the broad statements help scope the more detailed defense. You may have hundreds of distinct points to oppose welfare, but they can all be grouped into broad categories - which you'd name when Destiny asked you 'what are your reasons for opposing it', and if he said 'would you be fine with welfare without those' you'd say 'yes' or 'yes, but that's an impossible hypothetical' (which is what i'd say in that circumstance), and then the discussion would narrow into one of your points.
With Megan, he can't do that - he can either engage with her on 'it's about women' or 'it's about penetration', and then if he wins that argument megan will just say 'yeah but its still bad without those' an hour later, and then both parties will run out of time, unsatisfied.
The broad statements help scope the more detailed defense, yes, but the more detailed defense is still important enough that answering one objection doesn't necessarily mean, and often doesn't mean, answering another. You can't just say "the welfare argument is about helping poor people, and either you do or you don't agree with that" and claim it's some kind of gotcha when someone specifically objects to, for instance, building homeless shelters, because "don't you think it's good to help poor people?"
If you mean that the number of arguments isn't literally 999, sure.
I did just mean that the number of arguments isn't literally 999 or even 99, tbh. It it's more like there are 4 big arguments, each with 4 sub-arguments within them, and so on. (obviously it's much more nebulous and interconnected than that literally)
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