I wonder if this is related to the so-called coastline paradox? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox In other words, what is the criteria for filtering out good and bad elevation candidates?
Does it help imagining this on a tennis ball? Let's say we make 2 pyramid-like blobs of plasticine and put them on opposing sides of the tennis ball. Now we slowly move them closer to each other until they can both just see other. Is it not possible to form the pyramids in such a way, that the first point of visibility is the pyramids' bases, and not their peaks?
For me it comes down to the fact that although it might seem obvious what a peak is when you see one, I don't think there's any meaningful way to geographically define one. They're always just _locally_ higher points.
BTW this is exactly why I wrote the post, it's a fairly unique problem, and I'm sure I've made some problematic assumptions.
Does it help imagining this on a tennis ball? Let's say we make 2 pyramid-like blobs of plasticine and put them on opposing sides of the tennis ball. Now we slowly move them closer to each other until they can both just see other. Is it not possible to form the pyramids in such a way, that the first point of visibility is the pyramids' bases, and not their peaks?
For me it comes down to the fact that although it might seem obvious what a peak is when you see one, I don't think there's any meaningful way to geographically define one. They're always just _locally_ higher points.
BTW this is exactly why I wrote the post, it's a fairly unique problem, and I'm sure I've made some problematic assumptions.