An Epiphany

Well for sure the stylus is wearing away the vinyl. Of that there is no doubt. Go look real close at the front of any cartridge that has been playing a long time. That thin layer of black dust is record vinyl scraped up by the stylus banging around back and forth chipping little bits off the groove walls.

Which if you imagine it carving along like a skier sorry wrong go listen to Ledermann talk about jitter.

Even tracking a perfectly smooth straight groove, which would be dead silent with virtually zero wear, what happens is the tiniest vibration gets the stylus/cantilever/suspension/motor mass vibrating at whatever its inherent resonance is, and this resonance is the "groove noise" you hear, which is really the stylus being banged back and forth bouncing off the walls like a drunk stumbling down an alley.

There's your record wear. Its so teeny tiny though you could play the thing for centuries, if not millennia, going through a lot of styli in the process, before it would wear through the record.

What the OP is talking about is the audiophile BS about the pressure of the stylus bringing the vinyl up to melting temperature and the LP need hours to recover before being played again.   It's always been nonsense.

Thank you rwortman. No only that but I never have any "black stuff" on my stylus. Millercarbon you got to stop smoking those cigars or start using a dust cover. Vinyl is very amorphous stuff. It adheres to itself very strongly. So strongly that when cool thousands of PSI can not displace it. 
There is only one other substance, a polysomethingorother that would make better records but it is cost prohibitive. I have records that are 60 years old and still quite listenable although my record hygiene was not the best back then. 

One way of ensuring that everything is gently run in....... sorry ;)

Clean records are a MUST if you want to avoid wear. Clean records can be played back thousands of times without degradation-- this HAS been studies-- so long as your turntable is setup right and your stylus is kept scrupulously clean.

New vinyl IS NOT NATURALLY CLEAN-- it must be cleaned to set a baseline as you have NO IDEA whether or not is actually clean-- even if it appears to when you examine it.

I've never seen this "black dust" and I use a USB microscope to examine my stylus. It's just more audiophile booshwa.

Practice good vinyl hygiene and your records will last many generations.