This is something I’ve been thinking about recently. In particular, you can generalize this by examining temporary conserved quantities, such as phases of matter (typically produced by spontaneous symmetry-breaking). This supports a far richer theory of information-accessible-at-a-distance than only permanently conserved quantities like energy can provide, and allows for this information to have dynamics like a stochastic process. In fact, if you know a bit of solid-state physics you probably realize exactly how much of our observed macroscopic properties (e.g. object color) are determined by things like spontaneous symmetry-breaking. You can make all of this more rigorous and systematic by connecting to ergodic theory, but this is probably deserving of a full paper, if I can get around to it. Happy to discuss more with anyone else.
This is something I’ve been thinking about recently. In particular, you can generalize this by examining temporary conserved quantities, such as phases of matter (typically produced by spontaneous symmetry-breaking). This supports a far richer theory of information-accessible-at-a-distance than only permanently conserved quantities like energy can provide, and allows for this information to have dynamics like a stochastic process. In fact, if you know a bit of solid-state physics you probably realize exactly how much of our observed macroscopic properties (e.g. object color) are determined by things like spontaneous symmetry-breaking. You can make all of this more rigorous and systematic by connecting to ergodic theory, but this is probably deserving of a full paper, if I can get around to it. Happy to discuss more with anyone else.