[ExI] Dark Matter

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 08:00:33AM +0000, Anders Sandberg wrote:

> In fact, we cannot even handle planetary scales. I cannot
> intuitively think about the distance from Oxford to Stockholm or
> even London. I can compare it to known distances, I can play around
> with imagined maps, I can remember what the trip is like, but I
> don't *feel* it like I feel the distances within the towns where I
> have walked. I suspect the reason is that in order to go between
> these places I have to take a vehicle rather than wander. In between
> these target places there is an awful lot of places that would feel
> big to me if I were in them, but since I have never been to Ipswich
> I do not have any feel for it. It is just a point on my mental map
> (with a sticky note saying it was used in a Monty Python joke).

I think the failure is due to absence of evolutionary pressures
to evolve e.g. place cell representations for large scale landscapes.
When navigating there, you string along landmarks -- probably a 
different representation (linear memory sequence) from place
cells.