With that said, it is a shame that in cases like this, you may not even know about a post with hundreds of comments unless someone sends you a link. Have you thought about implementing a view that ignores the flamewar detection? This could even be a historical view, like https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2024-01-31 . The post in question was one of the highest upvoted submissions of the day and yet it's not on the first page of this link.
I fully agree with you that in the majority of cases these comments are not encouraging intellectual curiosity, I still do like reading the comments because I do find some interesting stuff there sometimes.
Yes. That exists in https://news.ycombinator.com/active, which is listed in https://news.ycombinator.com/lists, which is linked in the footer.