Tycho, we're about to achieve a tremendous victory we don't want." "We'll put that in your biography. General Antilles was so good he couldn't fail when he tried to." "Thanks." Wedge & Tycho
You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
Nobody really likes to be lectured a lot. And, therefore, if you want to be an effective person, what you don't do is scold the person publicly all the time.