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Updated: Feb 10, 2026
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Local and Global Methods of Assessing Thermal Nociception in Drosophila Larvae
Published on: May 18, 2012
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Operational locality in global theories.
Lea Krämer1, Lídia Del Rio2,3
1Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Summary
This study proposes agents as fundamental building blocks to derive physical theories and operational locality from signalling conditions. It connects local actions and observations, offering a new perspective on information processing in physical theories.
Area of Science:
- Foundations of quantum mechanics
- Information theory
- Theoretical physics
Background:
- Locality is a key concept in global physical theories, enabling information-processing primitives like non-signalling.
- Existing frameworks often derive primitives from locality, but an inverse approach is underexplored.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore an "it from bit" approach, using agents as fundamental units to derive physical theories.
- To recover operational notions of locality from signalling conditions between agents.
- To establish an operational link between local actions and local observations.
Main Methods:
- Introduction of an operational model for agent state spaces and action ranges.
- Formulation of secrecy conditions between agents.
- Identification of locality aspects relevant to signalling.
Main Results:
- Development of a framework to define physical theories based on agent interactions.
- Demonstration of how signalling conditions can define operational locality.
- Establishment of an "it from bit" connection between actions and observations.
Conclusions:
- The proposed approach provides a novel perspective on physical theories by prioritizing agents and signalling.
- This framework offers global interpretations for concepts like subsystem discarding and function composition.
- Potential applications exist in quantum theory and generalized probability frameworks.
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