Agreed that futile debates are silly. (I do sometimes enjoy them, but only when they're fun.)

That said, I find it works for me, in order to avoid them, to accept that questions about the persistent thing (be it reality or a model) are only useful insofar as they lead us to a clearer understanding of the persistent thing. It's certainly possible to construct and argue about questions that don't do this, but it's not a useful thing to do, and I try to avoid it.

I haven't yet found it necessary to assert a firm position on the ontological nature of reality beyond "the persistent thing" in order to do that. Whether reality is "in the map" or "in the territory" or "doesn't exist at all" seems to me just another futile debate.