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Do all first links on Wikipedia lead to philosophy?

289 points| tbull007 | 14 years ago |matpalm.com | reply

48 comments

order
[+] westicle|14 years ago|reply
Project HN: Identify all non-confirming Wikipedia articles and edit them to fit the pattern.
[+] RobertHubert|14 years ago|reply
Seeing as we humans ceated Wikipedia perhaps in an effort to define and describe everything there is, the product ends up filtered through the lenses of it's creators and in doing so we inevitably end up defining what it is to be human. I dont believe we can understand or describe anything beyond what it is we are. Wikipedia is essentially the accumulation of the collective knowledge of it's creators so what else should we expect it to be outside of the definition of what it is to be man. The attempt to collect and master the understanding of everything is afterall a philosophic endeavor. Done babbling now lol.
[+] duien|14 years ago|reply
By the time I looked at this, the end path had changed, as "Fact" now leads to "Truth" instead of "Information". How long until someone intentionally manipulates the chain?
[+] mat_kelcey|14 years ago|reply
I was using the 2011-07-22 set so the data's already a bit stale...
[+] stonemetal|14 years ago|reply
When the question came up on XKCD a little while ago the answer is "no there are several loops that don't loop through philosophy". On a more conceptual level what does it mean to lead to philosophy? First links on Wikipedia do not form a tree with philosophy as the root, after all philosophy has a first link that is not itself. So we are looking at a graph and attempting to determine if all random walks of the graph passes through point P.
[+] RobertHubert|14 years ago|reply
Just tested it for the hell of it, started with "FireFighter", thought it was random... and 30 clicks later landed on Philosophy! Fun stuff.
[+] RobertHubert|14 years ago|reply
Tried the word Stupid... Just got stuck in a loop.

EDIT: Tried it again... Stupid - Philosophy = 11

[+] unknown|14 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] RobertHubert|14 years ago|reply
What about other sites like www.conservapedia.com or www.rationalwiki.org?

I tried on conservapedia and kept winding up at Earth or stuck in a loop.

[+] atomicdog|14 years ago|reply
On Conversvapedia everything eventually leads to "Ronald Reagan".
[+] blago|14 years ago|reply
You can try it for yourself: http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill
[+] atomicdog|14 years ago|reply
The default first entry, "Human", doesn't even reach "philosophy" before the maximum of 50 steps is reached. Kinda blows a hole in the theory...
[+] tbull007|14 years ago|reply
That's great! Does it "crawl" wikipedia live?
[+] whacker|14 years ago|reply
A lot of them do, but sometimes there are loops (Eg. Computer Science). If you make an exception, choosing the second link for example, then it will lead you to philosophy.
[+] atomicdog|14 years ago|reply
If you make exceptions indiscriminately it will lead you to anything.
[+] fezzl|14 years ago|reply
It even worked when I tried "Stone Cold Steve Austin"...
[+] yxhuvud|14 years ago|reply
But which of the twelve has the lowest average length? The article points to 'science', but how would the number of steps graph look then?
[+] clownzor|14 years ago|reply
I found a few that didn't go to philosophy back when the comic came out. My favorite: Han Solo -> Harrison Ford -> Han Solo...
[+] bluekeybox|14 years ago|reply
Why philosophy? If you keep clicking, you actually end up in a loop: Philosophy -> Reason -> Human nature -> Thought -> Consciousness -> Mind -> Panpsychism -> Philosophy -> ...

I'd say, of the above, "mind", "thought", and "reason" are pretty basic -- you cannot have philosophy without a mind, for one (though you can probably have a mind without philosophy).

[+] dimmuborgir|14 years ago|reply
Saying "you cannot have philosophy without a mind" itself is one of the many philosophical concepts of mind-matter dualism.