I'll try to add some value to add some unique value to the discussion, without quoting previous comments:

Sometimes, people may start a discussion about something that they don't know what it is, *because* it's exactly what they started a discussion for - to ask others to help them define and understand better what is this thing they're asking about - in someone else's eye.

Generally, yes, any other discussion that is being started without defining itself well from the start, is pointless, I suppose. They'll be infinite red herring fallacies in such a discussion.

But when starting a discussion about an extremely abstract concept such as "freedom", which can mean millions of different things, depending on the word's "context". Sometimes explaining what can be known about something can be complex enough that it can be worth starting a discussion on.

It's not like we're like scientists, who define words via materialistic things they observe and find, in which case, it is probably always pointless to discuss how to understand a certain word.