Essentially a rat navigating a maze has to sample points in space. On the grid four quarters are sampled. When turned into a tube the four quarters become two halves and then distorted into a torus the two halves become one point. So essentially the rat physically has one body and fundamentally can only act out one decision. So the distortion is a biological necessity.

Considering the rat in a maze scenario, the potential of artificial intelligence to coordinate itself in multiple bodies is worrying. Societietal activities such as war or building takes coordinated action amongst individual bodies which is a test of the individual and the larger symbolic body of activity.

With artificial intelligence the multitude of bodies can exist within one ‘mind’. That would create a body that can go in multiple directions as opposed to biological decision making. Think of the technical application of coordinated human efforts such as war or building a skyscraper.

Overall these efforts need to be managed yet having a unified mind biology doesn’t allow such a thing to exist easily. Culture helps but is quite an effort that builds a lot of the complex interactions with a lot of latency. A war would be an example of humans testing their group’s coordinated ability to expand territory. 

The goal is to keep it through testing their enemy and trying to take advantage of the others weaknesses.