Definitions
We often hear people ask to define certain words before diving into complicated topics, or people will say "by definition" as some defeater to an argument. In the former case, it seems this is done because certain words can mean different things in different contexts and it cannot always be guaranteed that everyone will have the same understanding of the word, so asking for a definition from someone is an effort in reaching consensus in parlance and making contexts clear so that people don't talk past eachother. In the latter case, the person seems to be implying that a consensus of a word has already been reached and that the definition of the word must set further grounds of the debate or discussion. When we provide a definition in case one, we often just go by the consensus given by a trusted authority, like wikipedia, or provide context if the authority has more than one available. However, imagine that someone has discovered something new and has to come up with a de...