xkcd

by **Turing Machine** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:28 am UTC

I just typed something in - meant to type "stuff" but typed "tuff" because I was just trying to randomly put something in to test this. Indeed, I got to Philosophy in the end O_O

by **jspenguin** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:29 am UTC

I happened to have "List of Doctor Who Episodes" open, so I tried it:

by **JoeZ** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:31 am UTC

I went ahead and logged my path towards philosophy like a good scientist;

Start:
0-Zimbabwe 1-Southern Rhodesia 2-Colony 3-Politics 4-collective decisions (group decision making) 5-individuals 6-person 7-human being 8-taxonomically 9-science 10-knowledge 11-facts 12-information 13-sequence 14-mathematics 15-quantity 16-property 17-Modern Philosophy 18-Philosoply

HOLY MOTHER OF?!

I also ran "small interfering RNA", which converges with that path on the article "science" in 8 links rather than 9! This is pretty funny.

by **sargeras0000** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:31 am UTC

Draco18s wrote:
Nicad wrote:I find it interesting that the alt text seems to be more of a focus of discussion than the actual comic.

...I have just wasted 20 minutes trying to find a counterexample which is not a loop.

There are some pages without any links in them, I think, depending on which links you count as valid.

by **WolfieMario** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:32 am UTC

I tried the alt text and managed to skirt right by philosophy several times, thanks to "Aristotle" having the "Greek" linked before the "philosopher" :lol:

EDIT: It took 19 clicks to get to philosophy from "xkcd". It took surprisingly long to hit "mathematics" from "xkcd"...

by **arotenbe** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:34 am UTC

Tried it with one of the Wikipedia tabs I had open ("RIAA"), and it worked by way of "Mathematics". Huh.

Someone should make a Collatz-style directed graph where the vertices are Wikipedia articles and the edges are the "first link is to" relation.

by **Krizkuh** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:36 am UTC

Ran into a loop with the Greeks.

I suggest an addendum for the game:

If a link leads to an article that has already been visited in the current session, move on to the next valid link.

by **BlandSauce** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:36 am UTC

Draco18s wrote:...I have just wasted 20 minutes trying to find a counterexample which is not a loop.

I don't think that's possible. Since there's a finite number of articles, you either will come across one of the many that do lead to philosophy, or end up in some group that does not, which would end up having to loop on itself, or be a chain of articles that is constantly being added to faster than you can click.

EDIT: Dead ends are another possibility.

by **impiaaa** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:38 am UTC

Had to try the alt-text myself. Started at the article for xkcd.

by **WolfieMario** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:39 am UTC

Best thing ever: you'll never reach "Philosophy" when starting from "Philosophical zombie" because of a loop between "Hypnosis" and "Hypnotherapy". How fitting :lol:

by **Brooks Hatlen** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:40 am UTC

Draco18s wrote:...I have just wasted 20 minutes trying to find a counterexample which is not a loop.

I'm sure this could be turned into a blonde joke. I'm just too tired to do it myself.

by **Larry Mahnken** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:41 am UTC

I "fixed' computer science by making "collection" into a link (so it's now the first one). I figure that's not vandalism.

Frankly, it *should* be true.

by **vortighast** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:45 am UTC

Randall should make a picture of the link tree like he did for the Collatz Conjecture, I'd buy a poster of it.

by **skippy5393** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:45 am UTC

I'll post an example of the alt text that blew my mind:

Cheese
Food
Plant
Life
Biota (ecology)
Organism
Biology
Natural Science
Science
Latin
Italic Languages
Indo-European Language
Language Family
Language
Communication
Meaning (philosophy of language)

Now that's just awesome. Philosophy from cheese.

by **mmaluff** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:46 am UTC

Alt text: Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy".

This isn't true. Look, start at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_quantity

You get a loop.

by **glasnt** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:46 am UTC

If you click sequential wikipedia links, where the link is between the 3rd and 11th word on the 2nd last paragraph of the article, you end up in my backyard.

by **Charem** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:46 am UTC

I decided to try something that seemed very disconnected from philosophy. I figured, let's go with a Pokemon. xP And the path ended up being...

Charmeleon > List of Pokémon > Pokémon > Media Franchise > Intellectual Property > Exclusive Right > Anglo-Saxon Law > Anglo-Saxons > Germanic Peoples > Ethnolinguistics > Linguistics > Human > Taxonomy > Science > Knowledge > Fact > Information > Sequence > Mathematics > Quantity > Property (Philosophy) > Modern Philosophy > Philosophy

Amazing how this works, really. XP It doesn't work for -everything-, but it does work often!

by **alan.briolat** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am UTC

The very first one I tried was still on the car theme: clutch. Got stuck in a clutch/brake loop. Just like stop-start traffic...

by **Taymon** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:49 am UTC

United States > Federalism > Government > Legislator > Legislature > Deliberative assembly > Organization > Corporation > State (polity) > Social sciences > Umbrella term > Superset > Mathematics > Quantity > Property (philosophy) > Modern philosophy > Philosophy

This is significant because on nearly every article about an American person, the first link is "American".

by **twistees** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:50 am UTC

So is the page about Philosophy the wikipedia page with the most (internal) in-links?

by **DieJay** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:51 am UTC

Haha, this wikipedia game really made my day! Looks like everything truly revolves around philosophy nowadays, even scratch!

by **Stratis** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:52 am UTC

DOG! If you start at dog, you eventually get into a loop around physical qualities. Although, you get very close, when philosopher is the second link on one page.

by **Waladil** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:53 am UTC

Here's something interesting: I was playing with it, and it worked for a while (often through Quantity->property->Modern Philosophy->Philosophy) and then it STOPPED WORKING, in an infinite loop.
I looked in the histories, and someone changed Property(philosophy) to Property, creating an infinite loop. I think it was done JUST TO ruin this game, because almost everything got funneled in there. Also, it was reverted (and therefore working again!) seven minutes later.

Also, it would be better to say that all articles end at Rationality, not Philosophy, because Philosophy links to Reason, which links to Rationality, which links back to Philosophy; therefore Rationality is "further down" the chain than Philosophy. (Plus, it begs the question: Are we really rational people if we spend our time clicking links just to see if we get a mental reward of it hitting Philosophy?)

by **whitecastlerun** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:55 am UTC

Ball -> Philosophy in 17 clicks.

For those getting stuck because of Greek - I think you're clicking inside parentheses. The Greek link in the Greek article is in parentheses. The first clickable one according to the game is nation, which leads you to philosophy fairly quickly.

by **Piogre** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:55 am UTC

I think I found the source of the loops

Most of the routes to "philosophy" go through "mathematics". The route from there includes the "Quantity" page, which often has "Quality" as the first link. However, sometimes "Property" has a link, which puts you in a loop. The link on "Property" keeps getting switched back and forth.

Edit: Ninja'd

worked for a while, though. Got from "Team Fortress 2" to "Philosophy."

by **from canada** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:56 am UTC

w.r.t the alt-text: So now randal is stealing jokes that are not only un-funny but also completely wrong?

what happened to being a webcomic for smart people. now it's just pumping out the same random bullshit you find everywhere else (since ya know, he's blatantly ripping it off)

As for the comic itself, I love how it works for a character whose only interaction's with people are possible from behind a computer screen; looks like randal really knows his audience.

i only thing i found funny about this comic (in an ironic way you idiot) was that it reminded me of the fact that if wikipedia went down, maybe randal would actually have some time to make comics that didn't suck, since he'd be losing his primary reference source

edit:

Waladil wrote:(Plus, it begs the question: ...?)

please die in a fire you, fucking moron

by **Tjh** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:57 am UTC

Re: Physical Quantity thing, the problem was with one of the links, I guess very recently someone messed with the article and changed [[Property (Philosophy)|property]] to [[property (Philosophy)|property]] , they did mean to link it to the Property(Philosophy) article but due to the missing capital P it did not go there...corrected

by **Taymon** » Wed May 25, 2011 4:57 am UTC

A comment on the comic itself (as opposed to the alt-text): Did anyone else, upon reading this, immediately think of the implications for artificial intelligence? Everything that, say, a chatbot would need to know about the universe is right there.

I was probably inspired by a short story in Cory Doctorow's With a Little Help, which I'm currently reading in installments, courtesy of DailyLit.

by **dchorror** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:00 am UTC

For pokemon, I got this:

Pokemon>Media Franchise>Intellectual Property>Exclusive Right>Anglo-Saxon Law>Anglo-Saxons>Germanic Peoples>Ethnolinguistics>Linguistics>Human>Taxonomy>Science>Knowledge>Fact>Information>Sequence>Mathematics>Quantity>Property(philosophy)>Modern Philosophy>Philosophy

For digimon, I got this:

Digimon>Japan>East Asia>Subregion>Region>Geography>Earth>Planet>Orbit>Physics>Natural Science>Science>Knowledge>Fact>Information>Sequence>Mathematics>Quantity>Property(philosophy)>Modern Philosophy>Philosophy

When I first did the pokemon one, I hit a loop, but I'm not sure what caused it.

by **Sir_Read-a-Lot** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:00 am UTC

Waladil wrote:Here's something interesting: I was playing with it, and it worked for a while (often through Quantity->property->Modern Philosophy->Philosophy) and then it STOPPED WORKING, in an infinite loop.
I looked in the histories, and someone changed Property(philosophy) to Property, creating an infinite loop. I think it was done JUST TO ruin this game, because almost everything got funneled in there. Also, it was reverted (and therefore working again!) seven minutes later.

Also, it would be better to say that all articles end at Rationality, not Philosophy, because Philosophy links to Reason, which links to Rationality, which links back to Philosophy; therefore Rationality is "further down" the chain than Philosophy. (Plus, it begs the question: Are we really rational people if we spend our time clicking links just to see if we get a mental reward of it hitting Philosophy?)

I'm glad I'm not going crazy. I thought I had imagined the loop.

by **dwa** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:04 am UTC

So, um... Masturbation leads to a loop.
Bring on the puns.

by **1337geek** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:07 am UTC

I hit the "random article" button, followed the links, and ended up at Philosophy. Obviously my sample size of 1 does not prove the alt-text's assertion of ANY article, but it is indeed an interesting phenomenon.

Reminds me of the get-to-Jesus-in-X-clicks game. Apparently there are others too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Game

by **Turing Machine** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:08 am UTC

Taymon wrote:A comment on the comic itself (as opposed to the alt-text): Did anyone else, upon reading this, immediately think of the implications for artificial intelligence? Everything that, say, a chatbot would need to know about the universe is right there.

I was probably inspired by a short story in Cory Doctorow's With a Little Help, which I'm currently reading in installments, courtesy of DailyLit.

No, no it is not.

by **soytsauce** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:08 am UTC

jodokast34 wrote:It's not true. Check out the infinite loop between "Puppet" and "Puppeteer", one that I found on my second random article search. Did Randall not check or is it a meta-joke?

I fixed it.

by **Jay911** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:10 am UTC

I just tried it starting with "Slave Lake, Alberta" and wouldn't you know it, it worked... 20 jumps.

by **Tsunoba** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:13 am UTC

Just tried the philosophy bit with a page in my history (I was wondering where everyone got the date from), and ended up on a loop with Mathematics.

Got pretty close. Managed to get to articles that either definitely or very likely linked to the philosophy article, but it wasn't the first link.

And forgive me if this has been suggested before (I don't feel like reading all the other posts at the moment), but I wonder if it would work if, when getting to a loop, you simply took the next linked word instead, and then continued on with the first word again.

by **TheAbstractor** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:18 am UTC

I started with "Kicked in the Nuts" (the satirical short film produced by Family Guy writer and voice Mike Henry) and ended up in a feedback loop between "Mathematics", "Quantity" and "Property (philosophy)".

Today - Wednesday, May 25, 2011
1:10 AM
Property (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Quantity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Mathematics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Sequence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Information - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Fact - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Knowledge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Natural science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Physics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Atomic physics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Balmer series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Visible spectrum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:10 AM
Camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:09 AM
Video camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:09 AM
Hidden camera - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1:09 AM
Kicked in the Nuts - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

by **phlip** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:18 am UTC

Waladil wrote:I looked in the histories, and someone changed Property(philosophy) to Property, creating an infinite loop. I think it was done JUST TO ruin this game, because almost everything got funneled in there. Also, it was reverted (and therefore working again!) seven minutes later.

I don't think it was done specifically to ruin this game... if you keep digging in the history, you'll see that it's been in a state of edit warring on and off since the game showed up on reddit about a month ago (a month! of edit warring! over a game! WTF, people!). Before the edit war, the first link was back to mathematics... the first edit in the war was actually establishing "modern philosophy" as the first link, specifically to make the game work. The people changing it back aren't doing it specifically to break the game (or, at least, not all of them are)... some are just trying to put it back to the status quo ante, because the page just makes more sense that way.

But yeah, depending on what stage the edit war is in when you try, Mathematics will either lead you on a loop back to Mathematics, or it will lead to Philosophy.

Waladil wrote:Also, it would be better to say that all articles end at Rationality, not Philosophy, because Philosophy links to Reason, which links to Rationality, which links back to Philosophy; therefore Rationality is "further down" the chain than Philosophy.

Well, that doesn't mean much... you may as well say that "Reason links to Rationality, which links to Philosophy, which links back to Reason; therefore Philosophy is 'further down' the chain". Any one of the three in the loop could be reasonably referred to as the "base" entry. And I think philosophy makes sense - the first link on a specific thing is usually a general thing ("The '''Wikipedia First Link Game''' is a [[stupid game]] that [...]"), then the first link on that general thing is often a general class of things, for the same reason, and then the first link there is often even more general, and so on. Sure, there are exceptions, but you eventually end up on pages for general classes of things, and then the concept of creating classes of things, and eventually the concept of things and/or concepts, which is going to be a branch of Philosophy.

by **gubanichplague** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:20 am UTC

Waladil wrote:Here's something interesting: I was playing with it, and it worked for a while (often through Quantity->property->Modern Philosophy->Philosophy) and then it STOPPED WORKING, in an infinite loop.
I looked in the histories, and someone changed Property(philosophy) to Property, creating an infinite loop. I think it was done JUST TO ruin this game, because almost everything got funneled in there. Also, it was reverted (and therefore working again!) seven minutes later.

I was sure someone had read the comic and was fucking around, but no. There's been a battle about the property link on the quantity page for three days.

Who reads the "quantity" page on wikipedia anyway?

by **Schadenfreude** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:20 am UTC

soytsauce wrote:
jodokast34 wrote:It's not true. Check out the infinite loop between "Puppet" and "Puppeteer", one that I found on my second random article search. Did Randall not check or is it a meta-joke?

I fixed it.

Damnit, it's pointless edits like this that are bad for wikipedia's credibility. Please stop. Wikipedia is not TV tropes. You're just making random edits so it'll comply with a throwaway joke from a friggin' comic.

Why.

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