Your brain has a giant space of possible generative models[2] that map from underlying states of the world (e.g. “there’s a silhouette dancer with thus-and-such 3D shape spinning clockwise against a white background etc.”) to how the photoreceptor cells would send signals into the brain (“this part of my visual field is bright, that part is dark, etc.”)
How do you argue that the models are really implemented backwards like this in the brain?
For those interested in the numbers on pumped hydroelectric storage, we can get more energy by increasing ‘head’ or the distance that the weight falls, from 6 meters to up to 500 meters for some of the largest projects (and we could in theory go bigger).
Let’s pick a more reasonable number like 60 meters:
MASS/house = 15 kWh/house / (9.8 m/s² × 60 m) = 91,836 kg/house = 91 m^3/house
Let’s say we have a dam with ~20 meters of water level fluctuation (drawdown). Then that’s 5 m^2 per house of surface area.
As a sanity check, Bath County Pumped Storage Station in VA stores about 24000 MWh/ 30 KWh/house = 800,000 houses worth of energy.
800,000 houses * 5 m^2 = 4 km^2
The Bath County reservoir is about 1km^2 so we’re in the right range here (the reservoir has a little more drawdown and a way bigger head).
We’re going to be at Söderberg The Meadows; although the rain has stopped the world is still soaking wet.
Thank you so much for compiling these quotes; they are impactful and I might never have read them if you hadn’t posted them here.