Security of search and verification protocol in multidimensional blockchain

The issue of secure data exchange and performing external transactions between robust distributed ledgers has recently been among the most significant in the sphere of designing and implementing decentralized technologies. Several approaches have been proposed to speed up the process of verifying transactions on adjacent blockchains. The problem of search has not been under research yet. The paper contains security evaluation of data exchange between independent robust distributed ledgers inside multidimensional blockchain. Main principles, basic steps of the protocol and major requirements for it are observed: centralized approach, subset principle and robust SVP. An equivalence of centralized approach and ideal search and verification functionality is proven. The probability of successful verification in case of using fully connected network graph or equivalent approach with fully connected graph between parent and child blockchain is shown. The insecurity of approach with one-to-one links between child and parent ledgers or with a subset principle is proven. A robust search and verification protocol for blocks and transactions based on the features of robust distributed ledgers is presented. The probability of attack on this protocol is mostly defined by the probability of attack on verification and not on search. An approach to protection against an attacker with 50% of nodes in the network is given. It is based on combination of various search and verification techniques.

Infinite Cardinalities, Measuring Knowledge, and Probabilities in Fine-Tuning Arguments

This chapter deals with two different problems in which infinity plays a central role. It first responds to a claim that infinity renders counting knowledge-level beliefs an infeasible approach to measuring and comparing how much we know. There are two methods of comparing sizes of infinite sets, using the one-to-one correspondence principle or the subset principle, and it argues that we should use the subset principle for measuring knowledge. The chapter then turns to the normalizability and coarse tuning objections to fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God or a multiverse. These objections center on the difficulty of talking about the epistemic probability of a physical constant falling within a finite life-permitting range when the possible range of that constant is infinite. Applying the lessons learned regarding infinity and the measurement of knowledge, the chapter hopes to blunt much of the force of these objections to fine-tuning arguments.

The interpretation of logical connectives in Turkish

This study investigated how Turkish-speaking children and adults interpret negative sentences with disjunction (English or) and ones with conjunction (English and). The goal was to see whether Turkish-speaking children and adults assigned the same interpretation to both kinds of sentences and, if not, to determine the source of the differences. Turkish-speaking children and adults were found to assign different interpretations to negative sentences with disjunction just in case the nouns in the disjunction phrase were marked with accusative case. For children, negation took scope over disjunction regardless of case marking, whereas, for adults, disjunction took scope over negation if the disjunctive phrases were case marked. Both groups assigned the same interpretation to negative sentences with conjunction; both case-marked and non-case-marked conjunction phrases took scope over negation. The findings are taken as evidence for a ‘subset’ principle of language learnability that dictates children's initial scope assignments.

Agreement with coordinated subjects: A comparative perspective

I discuss the variation concerning agreement with coordinated subjects in Dutch dialects. I show that a verb or a complementizer in several variants of Dutch agrees with the first conjunct of a coordinated subject and in other variants with the coordinated subject as a whole. I argue that this variation can be accounted for by the interaction between the syntactic derivation and the post-syntactic morphological component.More specifically, I argue that syntax establishes an agreement relation with both the coordinated subject as a whole and the first conjunct of the coordinated subject. Subsequently, during the post-syntactic morphological derivation, one of these agreement relations will be overtly expressed on the Probe. The decision as to which one of the two relations is spelled out depends on the affix inventory of the language or dialect. More specifically, the subset principle is extended in such a way that, confronted with the situation in which a Probe is related to two Goals, an affix is inserted for the relation which results in the most specific agreement morphology. The analysis is extended to the typologically unrelated languages Irish and Arabic.