my variables are stored in the lexical pad (which is a hidden data structure associated with every block), while our variables are globals that are stored in the symbol table, for which our installs a lexically scoped alias.

Symbolic deferences only look in the symbol table, not in the lexical pad. A reason for that is that lexical variables can be removed from an outer pad when taking a closure, and allowing symbolic differentiation would defeat that optimization.

(Sorry if that explanation was very technical and relies on internals; if you don't understand it, read it as "it's much more efficient to implement that way")

Update: if you are more interested in philosophical arguments, there's a fundamental asymmetry between lexicals and entries in the symbol table: lexicals always have names that are identifiers, whereas symbol table entries can have arbitrary names: 

$ perl -lwe '*4 = sub { print "yes" }; 4->()' 
yes

[download]

So under some circumstance it might be better not to mix up the lookup of those two.

In reply to Re^3: Indirect variable name by moritz
in thread Indirect variable name by FreakyGreenLeaky

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