xkcd

by **ConMan** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:22 am UTC

It looks like (possibly related to the previous Reddit link) the Philosophy article was recently targeted by some 4chan (or similar) people, and as a result it's semi-protected for the next few days. I'm glad, because it helps reduce the Colbert effect this comic may otherwise have.

Oh, and I found the article from Nasi, which I got from Special:Random. I suspect that many of the "big" articles that don't currently satisfy the rules will be edited to change that, thereby making it true (after all, if you keep clicking until someone edits one of the articles in your loop, you will eventually escape the loop and reach Philosophy).

by **tagno25** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:23 am UTC

Pointing out loops breaks the loop, because someone "fixes" them.

by **CharonPDX** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:24 am UTC

Appropriately, starting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(TV_series) does, indeed, eventually lead to Philosophy.

I do find it funny that the path includes Aristotle, whose first links are "Greek philosopher", which seems like it's going to lead there very quickly, but Greek is its own link, and takes a while to eventually hit philosophy.

Yeah, I've done a few dozen starting points, and always ended up at Philosophy. Haven't yet hit a loop (starting on my own, obviously following a couple of the examples here I do.)

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

Schadenfreude wrote:
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.

Wikipedia has credibility?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credibility

oh my so it does

by **Waladil** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:26 am UTC

phlip wrote: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.

And now my brain hurts. Thanks a lot. Psh. Anyone know how to get through a skull to scrub some memories with soap?

Oh, and I got a kick out of the guy who told me to die in a fire. I will have you know that I will only die by one of three things: Gunshot while being mugged, guillotine'd in the French Revolution (if I get my time machine working again like it was in the future), or killed in a tragic, albeit hilarious, explosion caused by my own two hands while performing SCIENCE!

by **hujackus** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:27 am UTC

sargeras0000 wrote:The alt text is incorrect. There are several articles ("computer software" and "oral history" for instance) that will trap you in loops.

I didn't find a loop for Computer software. The sequence of links is (I think)...
Computer software
Computer program
Instruction set
Computer architecture
Computer science
Information
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy

Of course this doesn't prove or disprove anything

by **Naleh** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:27 am UTC

The Big Bang Theory -> sitcom -> genre -> literature -> fiction -> narrative -> Latin -> Italic languages -> Indo-European languages -> language family -> language -> communication -> meaning (philosophy of language) -> Aristotle -> Greeks -> nation -> sovereign state -> state (polity) -> social sciences -> umbrella term -> subset -> mathematics -> quantity -> property (philosophy) -> modern philosophy -> philosophy.

25 steps, but it didn't take long to get caught in the track a lot of other people are following.

People really shouldn't go around messing with Wikipedia just to make things fit the joke, though... <_<

by **phlip** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:31 am UTC

Correction to my previous post: it looks like the first shot in the edit war was to break the game, not to fix it.

In other news: that page has since been semi-protected (in the working-for-the-game state) for being really really dumb.

by **metalana** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:33 am UTC

I disproved the mouseover text while almost proving it.

Special:Random > Sindh > Sindhi_language > Urdu > Register_(sociolinguistics) > Linguistics > Human > Taxonomy > Ancient_Greek > Language_family > Language > Communication > Meaning_(philosophy_of_language) > Aristotle > Greeks > Greek_language > Indo-European_languages > Language_family and now we loop.

Philosopher is the _second_ link in the Aristotle article. Sooooo close!

by **Kobukson** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:34 am UTC

I was hoping to prove alt-text wrong but my random article "EU Auto MyCar" ended up getting me to Philosophy >_<

EU Auto MyCar -> Giorgetto Guigiaro -> Supercar -> Marketing -> Customer relationship management -> Customer -> Product (business) -> Economy -> Economic system -> Production, costs, and pricing -> Microeconomics -> Economics -> Social sciences -> Umbrella term -> Subset -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy

by **Samik** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:36 am UTC

I as well have seen edits being made in real time that break and/or fix the game. I would have common paths I had often taken to philosophy just suddenly stop working, then when I was going back trying to figure out if I was nuts, they would start working again.

I don't know how much that should frighten me.

Anyway, this comic is my life. I'm starting to think I don't really know anything anymore - I just have the capacity to google. It's really somewhat terrifying not only how much information we have ready access to, but just how fast a lot of that information can be found. I literally cannot remember the last time I have had any question about any day to day thing that I haven't been able to find the answer to in about 5 to 10 seconds. I mean, really, the latency is getting so low at this point that I'm finding that it often takes me longer to actually drag old information up out of my own brain than it does for me to find information online.

That's right: in increasingly many cases, the internet - on top of having vastly more storage capacity than my own mind - actually delivers data to my awareness faster than my own memory.

Just give me a wireless neural link and some eyeballs that can overly the interface on my visual field, and I'm good to go.

by **Waladil** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:36 am UTC

metalana, the Greek Language link is in parenthesis. It should be Greeks, then Nation. Sorry mate.

by **garromark** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:37 am UTC

I've noticed that many articles end up going through mathematics which leads down to Property (philosophy), which begins with a list of links "In modern philosophy, mathematics, and logic," which then sends you down to Philosophy. If you were to reorder this list to have "mathematics" first, you'd break this property much more often and would end up with many more loops (anything falling into mathematics and its children).

by **Fixblor** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:37 am UTC

This all sounds conspicuously like social engineering.

Also, this thread is smoking ...

by **phlip** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:39 am UTC

metalana wrote:Special:Random > Sindh > Sindhi_language > Urdu > Register_(sociolinguistics) > Linguistics > Human > Taxonomy > Ancient_Greek > Language_family > Language > Communication > Meaning_(philosophy_of_language) > Aristotle > Greeks > Greek_language > Indo-European_languages > Language_family and now we loop.

Remember: not counting things in parentheses (like pronounciation guides)... the first link on Sindh is to "Administrative units of Pakistan". From there: Presidencies and provinces of British India -> Indian subcontinent -> Asia -> Continent -> Landmass -> Landform -> Earth science -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy.

Fixblor wrote:Also, this thread is smoking ...

So is the new-user post approval queue. I mean wow.

by **cat27514** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:42 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.

There actually already is. It's called Watson. It was developed by IBM to play as a contestant on Jeopardy.

by **philip1201** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:43 am UTC

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

Indeed it does: Actually it's just two articles linking to each other (Skeletal Striated Muscle and Striated Muscle Tissue), and masturbation is only something that links to it.

Also I fixed soytsauce's fix. So there.

Hujackus: "Computer science" links to "Theory" first, which goes through "Ancient Greek" into the maelstrøm that is Greek philosophy.

Phlip: No, it wasn't, the first shot was to remove the link "modern philosophy", three minutes after this comic was released (00:03 GMT May 22nd). "Mathematics" was added later.

by **garromark** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:47 am UTC

I wish the article on "Recursion" fell into itself...

by **phlip** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:50 am UTC

philip1201 wrote:Phlip: No, it wasn't, the first shot was to remove the link "modern philosophy", three minutes after this comic was released (00:03 GMT May 22nd). "Mathematics" was added later.

No, the first shot, which I linked to a ways up the page, was on 14 April. Which is before 22 May. Which is also before this comic was released (today is the 25th...).

by **furgle** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:50 am UTC

Bill hunter Australian actor died this week. so from him...

Bill Hunter -> film -> recording -> process -> milk ->Mammary gland -> organ -> Biology -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> fact -> information -> sequence -> Mathematics ->quantity -> property -> Modern philosophy -> philosophy

why does film go to Mammary Gland ?

by **Eternal Density** » Wed May 25, 2011 5:56 am UTC

In reverse order:

Code: Select all: Philosophy Modern philosophy Property (philosophy) Quantity Mathematics Sequence Information Fact Knowledge Science Natural science Anthropology Symbolic system Writing system Grapheme Glyph Diacritic Trema (diacritic) Zoology Ethology Play (activity) Game Electronic game Video game Open world Minecraft

Also:

Code: Select all: Philosophy Modern philosophy Property (philosophy) Quantity Mathematics Sequence Information Fact Knowledge Science Natural science Biology Biological system Nervous system Central nervous system Visual system Graphics Comics Webcomic xkcd

[edit] since Credibility came up:

Code: Select all: Philosophy Modern philosophy Property (philosophy) Quantity Mathematics Subset Umbrella term Social sciences State (polity) Local government Seat of local government Capital city Rome Latium Latin Narrative Non-fiction Document Web page Website Stanford Web Credibility Project Credibility

Hmm, Philosophy -> Reason -> Rationality -> Philosophy
We should totally make an application which scrapes all the first links in all wikipedia articles and finds all the loops and then determines what percentage of articles are directed to each loop. For science. And so we know how correct/incorrect Randall is.

by **TheGrammarBolshevik** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:01 am UTC

As a philosophy major, I hella approve.

by **zAlbee** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:05 am UTC

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

Yep, that was a waste of time, because the only way not to reach a word is to have a loop (or reach a dead-end, but let's assume there are none).

Additionally, every path must either be a loop or reach a dead end.

Proof sketch: Assume a path is not a loop and not a dead end. No item can occurs in the path twice. Eventually you run out of unique items to put in the path.

by **Fixblor** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:05 am UTC

Look at what happens after "Philosophy" when continuing the process:

Philosophy ->
Reason (listed as "rational argument") ->
Rationality ->
Philosophy ...

So, why is it that all links lead to "philosophy" and not "reason" or "rationality"?
All are equally as valid given the loop and process.

I suggest that without reason, philosophy would be impossible and rationality would have no meaning.
But Reason doesn't go all warm and fuzzy with how we perceive the "extended mind" that is the mutable encyclopedia.

by **Meem1029** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:05 am UTC

22 from Kamikawa Subprefecture.

by **benwr** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:07 am UTC

Well, it worked with "Coprophagia," the first sufficiently-random thing that popped into my head. Rigorous enough for me.

by **Kanonfutter** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:07 am UTC

All wikigaming aside, I have seen this trend in my high school classes. However, students have yet to find out that Wiki can't think for them.

by **Eternal Density** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:08 am UTC

Funny thing in the Philosophy page history: 08:17, 21 May 2011 Bongwarrior (talk | contribs) m (106,057 bytes) (Changed protection level of Philosophy: Excessive vandalism ([edit=autoconfirmed] (expires 08:17, 28 May 2011 (UTC)) [move=sysop] (indefinite)))
Why?
07:48, 21 May 2011 72.73.227.51 (talk) (42 bytes) (←Replaced content with 'DONT MESS WITH THE ANONYMOUS /b/ROTHERHOOD') (Tag: blanking)

Looks like anon got there way before anyone from xkcd could vandalise it. It's as if they knew we'd be coming.
Get out of Randall's head, anon!
Also: http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Philosophy
spike on the 21st, then went down, now starting to go back up again.

[edit] eCookie for the longest chain!

by **ocean_soul** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:10 am UTC

... the first link in philosophy goes to reason, wich is the real root of all knowledge.

by **whitecastlerun** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:10 am UTC

xkcd linked to philosophy directly for 6 minutes. Good job fixing that, random internet dude. It still gets there, of course, but it takes longer. Randall's also leads there.

by **Samik** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:11 am UTC

benwr wrote:Well, it worked with "Coprophagia," the first sufficiently-random thing that popped into my head. Rigorous enough for me.

Yeah, right :lol:

Can't Get There From Here -> United States -> Federalism -> Politics -> Group Decision Making -> Individual -> Person -> Human -> Taxonomy -> Science (you know the rest from here).

Dang. I really wanted that one to work

(EDIT: and by "work" I mean "not work", obviously.)

by **benwr** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:15 am UTC

Samik wrote:Yeah, right

Well, maybe more chaotic than random, depending on your view of the human brain. Although, thinking about it, it was probably associated with my recent Andrew Bird reawakening.

Edit: Speaking of chaos, it was Andrew Bird rather than the Decemberists. Been a long day.

by **Toam** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:15 am UTC

Eternal Density wrote:In reverse order:
Hmm, Philosophy -> Reason -> Rationality -> Philosophy
We should totally make an application which scrapes all the first links in all wikipedia articles and finds all the loops and then determines what percentage of articles are directed to each loop. For science. And so we know how correct/incorrect Randall is.

This would be cool.

And since I did it before I read this thread, here is my "random article" pathway:
Bloomfield (film)
Drama film
Film genre
Film theory
Critical theory
Critique
Discourse [Actually second link - first link was to wiktionary]
Debate
Argument
Ontology
Philosophy

by **DragonHawk** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:16 am UTC

This really isn't that surprising. As phlip alludes to, a fairly common linguistic pattern in explanatory text is to identify the class something belongs to early on, thus leading one in the direction of more general topics. Eventually you're going to get into some fundamental branch of learning, like math or philosophy or what-have-you. By accident or design, many of the fundamental articles lead to philosophy.

Generically, any Wikipedia article will lead to others. The only way to terminate that is with a loop or an arbitrary cutoff. We're declaring "philosophy" as an arbitrary cutoff. But if you picked, say, "mathematics" as the arbitrary cutoff, that would often work, too.

Right now, philosophy is part of a loop, and combined with the above -- plus being a nicely loaded work -- it makes it good schmuck bait. One could just as easily say you'll eventually get to "rational argument", but that's not as loaded a word.

The fact that philosophy loops quickly back to itself appears to be rigged, based on both the edit history and a suspicious choice of what words to link in the lead section. But I bet you'd tend to have a large loop of fundamental subjects anyway. Math, science, physics, chemistry, biology, philosophy, language -- they all touch just about everything.

The reason for excluding italics and parenthetical is that they're commonly used for signposts that would lead you out of the encyclopedia entirely (to language guides, WP docs, etc.).

by **Samik** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:17 am UTC

Ah, found another two element loop:

Upper Canada -> The Canadas -> Upper Canada, Etc.

Aaaand, now that I think about it, the fact that I considered that to be worth posting may just make this a new all-time low. I think it's bedtime.

EDIT: There's definitely a joke about Canada to be made there. I'll leave it to someone else.

by **Scuttleduck** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:18 am UTC

I was on the page for "Oral History," which linked to "Oral History Society" and then back to "Oral History." I checked it again, and it has been edited so the first link is "Information." Randall Munroe's mindless lackeys are on a crusade to do his bidding!

by **Atomic Piranha** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:22 am UTC

Its a little weird how fascinated I am by this. I imminently began testing this and recording my finds. These are the examples I've tested (done by clicking "random article"), and some common paths.

Tested examples:
mathematics (4 clicks)
information (2 clicks to mathematics)
science (3 to information)
Art Collection of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia (13 clicks to science)
Patrick Wilson (9 to information)

Then I came here and was disappointed to see that there are some exceptions. Although as mentioned a lot of those articles have been edited. The first link in oral history is now information. I agree that someone should write code that tests this rule. Maybe find common loops and which paths are most common.

by **kyndo** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:23 am UTC

I typed in "Philosophy", and it eventually took me to "42".

by **hailthefish** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:25 am UTC

Scuttleduck wrote:I was on the page for "Oral History," which linked to "Oral History Society" and then back to "Oral History." I checked it again, and it has been edited so the first link is "Information." Randall Munroe's mindless lackeys are on a crusade to do his bidding!

If you had cared to read the thread instead of posting as fast as you can, there's been an ongoing edit war w/r/t the first link game for quite a while. Maybe if you'd been paying attention you could be bitching about plagiarized jokes instead.

Also, if you continue taking the NEXT link each time you discover a loop (i.e. take the second link instead of the first), I imagine you will eventually end up there from any article, unless you hit a dead end. It may drastically increase the number of steps, but...

by **synp** » Wed May 25, 2011 6:26 am UTC

sargeras0000 wrote:The alt text is incorrect. There are several articles ("computer software" and "oral history" for instance) that will trap you in loops.

Well, it's Wikipedia. If you've found a problem, don't talk about it in a forum. Fix it.

Besides, computer software --> computer program --> instructions (remember not to click things in parenthesis) --> computer architecture --> computer science --> Theory --> concept --> congnition --> science --> knowledge --> fact --> information --> sequence --> mathematics --> quantity --> property --> modern philosophy --> philosophy

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