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Suppose I utter the sentence "Some water flowed in through a hole in my
shoe."
I expect people to understand the concept of "shoe".
I expect people to understand the concept of "hole".
I expect people to understand the concept of "water".
I expect people to understand the concept of "flow".
I even expect people to understand that the concept of conservation, namely
that the increase in water in my shoe was balanced by a simultaneous
decrease in water just outside my shoe.
Could everybody give a formal technical definition for these
terms? Certainly not; writing definitions is hard. But folks can reliably
use these terms to communicate with each other, and that's good enough for me.
My goal is to write so that people who want to understand will
understand. If there are others who want to misunderstand, I'm sure they
can find a way to misunderstand; that's not my problem.