9 ms·

Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

hypest 15y ago
That "Wikipedia Trivia" is really intriguing! Manually tested and verified it.
- Deestan 15y ago
  I know I'm being pedantic here, but I'm pretty sure you haven't verified it. To do that, you would have to visit every Wikipedia article.
shawndumas 15y ago
That's 'cause Philosophy covers it all: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
- lloeki 15y ago
  Too bad there's no Philosophy in http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
  - davidcuddeback 15y ago
    Especially since a common path is to reach philosophy by first visiting the mathematics page: Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy
- dchest 15y ago
  Or, in other terms: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hgkdl/mindblown/c1v8fyp http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hgkdl/mindblown/c1v8fy...
selectnull 15y ago
And xkcd itself is "18 steps to philosophy"...
- lloeki 15y ago
  So is "Potato" and "Caen", and the majority of other things I tried. For Godwin points, "Hitler" is only 14 steps.
- thalur 15y ago
  I don't think it works correctly though... it uses "Author" as the first link whereas the first link in the text of the article is "webcomic" ("Author" is in the summary pannel on the side) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xkcd https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xkcd
  - lloeki 15y ago
    The same happens for cities or locations, where there is usually a "Coordinates" in the upper right corner. Still, I did it manually in text bodies, and you eventually end up to Science or Mathematics, which leads to Philosophy.
  - seppo0010 15y ago
    It seems to be taking the right panel first. Same thing happened to me with Trade[1], leaded to San Juan de Dios Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buying http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buying
camtarn 15y ago
Hah. The hypothesis is false, but the script already has that covered via loop detection... nice :) panhard Auverland Panhard uh oh... found a loop panhard -> auverland -> panhard. So far the longest trail I've found, at 25 steps, was from 'ED209' via pottery, through minerals, states of matter, knowledge, finite sets, mathematics... that's one heck of a wikitrail. [edit] Scratch that, 'Horst link' is longer via one step, going via transport, commerce, San Juan de Dios Market, Mexico, Romance languages, Precambrian, Chronology, etc...
- shrikant 15y ago
  "Beans" is 28 steps..
- iopuy 15y ago
  30 for "Howard Hughes" uh oh... found a loop mathematics -> quantity -> property_(philosophy) -> modern_philosophy -> western_europe -> europe -> continent -> landmass -> landform -> earth_sciences -> science -> knowledge -> fact -> information -> finite_set -> mathematics.
  - shadowpwner 15y ago
    Its supposed to stop at philosophy..
  - adsr 15y ago
    Makes sense for mathematics to be a loop since it's a self contained system.
  - kd0amg 15y ago
    modern_philosophy -> western_europe Looks like "philosophy" is the first link on the "Modern philosophy" page (and was last week when I first tried this). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&oldid=430354556 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&...
    - ceejayoz 15y ago
hamner 15y ago
By extension, you also will always end up at ... Existence Sense Organism Biology Natural_science Science Knowledge Fact Information Finite_set Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy
moconnor 15y ago
It seems to take a while to search; are you querying wikipedia each step instead of a DB snapshot?
- tim_iles 15y ago
  Last time I downloaded Wikipedia, it was 4.5GB. If I were to knock up this hack, I would definitely scrape pages instead.
  - blahedo 15y ago
    On-demand page scrape + memoisation is almost certainly a win here. Even if thousands of people are hitting this, a lot will choose some of the same queries (I'm sure Kevin Bacon and xkcd and philosophy are in there a bunch), especially in the tails of the paths (Latin, Mathematics, ...)
hencq 15y ago
Nice tool :-) It seems to also take words between parentheses though I think. For example on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland I would expect it to follow European not Icelandic.
zyfo 15y ago
This image shows how things end up in Philosophy, by XKCD forumite arotenbe: http://forums.xkcd.com/download/file.php?id=29727&mode=view http://forums.xkcd.com/download/file.php?id=29727&mode=v... Looking at these stats shows how viral this meme/trivia got: http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Philosophy http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Philosophy http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Mathematics http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Mathematics http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Reason http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Reason I posted these stats on a FB status a couple of days ago because of the sudden spike. Now that sudden spike looks small compared to today's sudden spike. Funny how there's different levels of viral, almost akin to different levels of infinite. What would happen if this hit mainstream media?
- joejohnson 15y ago
  On that chart, Greeks points to to other pages. How can Greeks have two first links?
  - sophacles 15y ago
    Schroedinger wrote that page.
  - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    That was my question, too. There doesn't seem to be a disambiguation that would apply, either. "Greek Language" shouldn't point to "Indo-European languages", it should point to "Greeks". I can't figure out how that went wrong, either, but it is interesting to see a cycle in an acyclic graph. :)
jrockway 15y ago
Ironically, it doesn't work from "Spark Plug".
- assemble 15y ago
  Strange, it did for me yesterday. Edit: Modern Philosophy seems to be missing the link to Philosophy, which should be there according to the edit history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&diff=next&oldid=430354556 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&...).
  - gnoupi 15y ago
    Apparently some kid was having fun vandalizing the page to break this. The page is semi-protected now, so it should be ok from now on.
dspillett 15y ago
Excellent. Saved me some clicking resulting in more efficient use of procrastination time! I hit loops a few times - you could drop to the second link in those cases instead of stopping completely.
- eru 15y ago
  If you drop out of loops, you will reach every article eventually. (Unless you are ending in a cul de sac.)
  - dspillett 15y ago
    If the draw to "philosophy" is as string at it seems you should end up there without scanning too many articles. You'd need some sort of fixed cap to avoid the few cases where you'd end up scanning thousands of articles, of course.
lloeki 15y ago
Wow, someone just modified Modern Philosophy (now first link is Western Europe), Science and/or Knowledge pages, which makes most previously things tried by me kick into a 25 loop. I'm wondering if it's intentional.
- hugh3 15y ago
  Most things were getting stuck in a loop around "Indo-European languages" last time I checked. Someone is definitely playing silly buggers. I was tempted to see whether I could somehow engineer an all-roads-lead-to-goatse situation, but I couldn't think of a plausible pathway.
  - eru 15y ago
    Just hijack Philosophy.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      Too easy. The idea was to create an entirely plausible pathway of links that nobody could complain about individually (so they wouldn't get reverted) which nonetheless eventually led to http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goatse
      - eru 15y ago
        I mean, create that plausible pathway with philosophy as its root. Since so many articles already lead to philosophy, it's a good starting point.
docmarionum1 15y ago
Modern Philosophy now goes to Western Europe rather than Philosophy. And since everything seems to go through that, nothing will reach philosophy anymore.
p4bl0 15y ago
An article[1] from the Xamuel.com's blog predates the xkcd stripe by a few days and states the sames things but with mathematics instead of philosophy. Also their's some fun with second links. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573038 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573038
- araneae 15y ago
  And the version using philosophy appeared on Reddit before the comic as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/hgwbe/on_wikipedia_all_roads_lead_to_philosophy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/hgwbe/on_wikiped...
Fargren 15y ago
You don't reach Philosophy from Philosophy.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 15y ago
  I did. Took 15 steps however.
- mauriciob 15y ago
  Yes, you do. 15 steps.
- malvim 15y ago
  Hey, I did! Did it using the software and then checked wikipedia by hand: Philosophy -> Existence -> Sense -> Organism -> Biology -> Natural_science -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Finite_set -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property_(philosophy) -> Modern_philosophy -> Philosophy 15 steps to philosophy
  - dkersten 15y ago
    The "Quantity" article did not contain the link to Property_(philosophy) before and it was added purely for the sake of this game. See the talk page for more details. Personally, I think its sad that people are editing wikipedia purely for the sake of making games work out.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
orblivion 15y ago
It totally worked for me, I tried it with Sausage and Cradle of Filth. I thought it was a joke, it blew me away. But then I found that "Osama Bin Laden" crossed "philosophers" and then ended on a loop between "reason" and "rationality". EDIT: I just tried "Osama Bin Laden", the steps it takes seems to be using a slightly different Wikipedia than I see.
- bad_user 15y ago
  I tried OOP, eventually arriving at Philosophy -- OMG, it works :))
ck2 15y ago
Also try turning off spell check or writing something significant on paper and see how well we do these days.
- camiller 15y ago
  Actually spell check, has made me a better speller. Of course in the old days when the apple ][ dominated the personal computer space you had to save your word processing file, exit the word processor, switch floppy disks, start the spell checker, switch the disk for the dictionary disk, run against your file, approve/reject suggested changes, save the file, exit the spell checker, switch to the floppy disk with the word processor on it, start the word processor load your file, find the things the spell checker flagged as wrong but couldn't find a correct word for and fix those. Seriously, it was just easier to get better at spelling.
joshklein 15y ago
This is no joke: 21 clicks from Kevin Bacon to Philosophy. Welcome to the Internet equivalent of a child repeatedly asking, "why?"
- neurolysis 15y ago
  Three, actually. Kevin Bacon > Meme > Philosophy.
  - sophacles 15y ago
    This statement shows a gross misunderstanding of the rules. Meme is quite far down the page. It is well after many links that are neither italicized nor inside parens. The statement whose veracity is being checked says First link (plus some other parameters).
- malloc 15y ago
  minor correction: 20 clicks
- sophacles 15y ago
  This shows a that the program linked is broken. The steps taken, are: 1. Animal House 2. .... Going to the actual Kevin Bacon Wikipedia page, Animal House is clearly italic. The First non-italic, top-level (wrt parens) is Golden Globe
  - m_myers 15y ago
    It took me 30 steps to do it manually, following the correct rules.
  - chad_oliver 15y ago
    I expect the program is working off an out-of-date database. Hitting wikipedia directly would be rather bad form.
- billpaetzke 15y ago
  Haha ya, it's crazy. I went to Wikipeida.com, clicked on a random link (Ratko_Mladić), and from there it took me 26 clicks of first links to reach the Philosophy page.
gizzlon 15y ago
15 stepf from Philosophy to Philosophy .. what are the implications?
mtodd 15y ago
Bastard beat me to it! Friend of mine was graphing out all of the connections (using Graphviz) and found some interesting patterns. Ultimately you can say the same thing for "Science", "Knowledge", and even "Mathematics".
chrislloyd 15y ago
A few years ago at Railscamp in Australia, Andrew Grimm proved this exact outcome. His code is here: https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-dump-parser https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-dump-parser and https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-navigation https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-navigation.
albertsun 15y ago
I tried it with Iraq, but the page parsing is slightly wrong. Got this result. Iraq Arabic_language Languages Human Precambrian Eon_(geology) Chronology Time Measurement Magnitude_(mathematics) Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 12 steps to philosophy But the link to Arabic is in parentheses. The first non-parenthesesed link is to Western Asia.
phillijw 15y ago
turtles --> 14 steps to philosophy
mbubb 15y ago
Fun Interesting that the first three i tried took about 17 hops and got funnelled through the "Life" entry. corndog sensimilia halitosis This took a few less hops and stayed in 'techne': voip. Would love to see these searches graphed. Years ago - one of my favorite sites was Everything2 (still up) - it was run on the slashdot engine. The fun of it was to follow the associated links at the bottom of the entry to see where it would take you.
- camtarn 15y ago
  E2 was wonderful for links teleporting you off into completely unrelated and equally fascinating subjects - I lost many an evening in that manner :)
- oldminer 15y ago
  Slashdot used to link to Everything (back before it was Everything2) as a sort of instant-dictionary for tech terms. Stories would have something like "RSS 2.0(?) and Atom(?) proponents are squaring off..." with the question marks going to the relevant Everything node. Most of the time, the terms wouldn't be defined until the story went live, and then they would be in short order. It was a neat symbiosis, especially back before Wikipedia existed. However, they were separate sites. Both Slashcode (which runs Slashdot) and the Everything Engine (which runs Everything2) are written in Perl. Everything was never run on Slashcode, though, AFAIK.
bluekeybox 15y ago
I tried and I end up in an infinite loop between science, philosophy, knowledge/epistemology, and language.
- Sukotto 15y ago
  "philosophy" is the halting condition
mildweed 15y ago
http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki?title=xkcd http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki?title=xkcd
blago 15y ago
I did this a while ago with node.js: http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill
- blago 15y ago
  source code: https://github.com/dachev/node-lab https://github.com/dachev/node-lab
nickolai 15y ago
XKCD Webcomic Comics Graphic Visual_perception Visible_light Electromagnetic_radiation Energy Physics Natural_science Science Knowledge Fact Information Sequence Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 19 steps to philosophy
- rufibarbatus 15y ago
  Main_Page is currently taking 19 steps too. (According to the program—other comments here point out that it may be ignoring the comic's rules.)
- billpaetzke 15y ago
  I wonder if we could say everything leads to science. I also reached philosophy via science. Ratko Mladic (randomly chosen from wikipedia homepage) Army of Republika Srpska Military Use of force Conflict resolution Negotiation Dialogue Literature Fiction Narrative Latin Italic languages Indo-European languages Language family Language Human Taxonomy Science Knowledge Fact Information Sequence Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy
  - toponium 15y ago
    emacs doesn't traverse through science but does hit computer science emacs text_editor software_application computer_software computer_program instruction_(computer_science) computer_architecture computer_science information sequence mathematics quantity property_(philosophy) modern_philosophy philosophy
joejohnson 15y ago
Can anyone find a path that doesn't end with: ... Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy
- SpacemanSpiff 15y ago
  cessna_172 Fixed-wing_aircraft Aircraft Vehicles Bicycle Human-powered_transport Transport Cargo Commerce Buying San_Juan_de_Dios_Market Guadalajara,_Jalisco States_of_Mexico Mexico Spanish_language Romance_languages Indo-European_languages Language_family Language Human Precambrian Eon_(geology) Chronology Time Measurement Magnitude_(mathematics) Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 28 steps to philosophy
- garyrichardson 15y ago
  Barrack Obama: barrack_obama List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States United_States_Constitution Supreme_law State_(polity) Social_sciences Field_of_study Academia Community Interacting Action_(philosophy) Philosophy
jimmyjazz14 15y ago
Appears you almost always get there via Mathematics though.
michaelleland 15y ago
1)ruby_on_rails 2)Open_source 3)Philosophy
conradev 15y ago
Theres a Wikipedia page on it, it works on 93% of all articles. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy
- lostbit 15y ago
  Yes. It dates back to 2008. Interesting that someone got bugged by it that time and just now it took this dimension.
SeoxyS 15y ago
Xkcd succeeded in making me waste 20min yesterday clicking links on Wikipedia checking whether it was actually true. I wish I had had this tool then!
- Deestan 15y ago
  On the other hand, would you have spent less than 20 minutes playing with the tool?
tobylane 15y ago
I just spent about 20 minutes trying to get anything more than 20. Wikipedia has the answer, as to not spoil here's a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy#Chains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy#Cha... I like the last loop on the article not crossed out.
- jrockway 15y ago
  Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy is not what xkcd is describing, though. That page seems to allow any link to be chosen. xkcd says, "click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics". For example, Wikipedia:_Get_to_Philosophy provides the example, Optimum "L" filter -> Butterworth filter. But the first link in 'Optimum "L" filter' is "Athanasios Papoulis".
- mikeleeorg 15y ago
  Same here. I finally got it with the word "Coprophagia". 21 steps. I feel oddly proud. (It came from a conversation some friends and I had about kopi luwak, just to explain why I tried this obscure word).
ignifero 15y ago
As of 2008, the center of English Wikipedia is the article 2007. From that article, it takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2,111,479 articles reachable from it. Disregarding all of the articles that are just lists, years or days of the year, the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom, at an average of 3.45 clicks to anywhere else. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation#Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation#Wikip...
- JonnieCache 15y ago
  >the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom I find this absolutely fascinating. Consider that the reason we're at the centre of the world map is because we had the power to choose to put ourselves there, at the point in history when the maps were being drawn. Is that imperial influence, long since waned, still echoing across the years, visible in the wikipedia graph?
  - ignifero 15y ago
    OR, it's just because they used the English wikipedia for it
    - JonnieCache 15y ago
      Hah, good point. I wasn't trying to be triumphalist, though I admit it certainly reads that way.
andrewflnr 15y ago
Hmm, doesn't work for cryovolcanism.
VengefulCynic 15y ago
The current version appears to dislike unicode characters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Dobrovi%C4%87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Dobrovi%C4%87 causes an error.
riffraff 15y ago
I find fascinating that if you end up on "Mathematics_education" than you have no chance of getting to "philosophy". (or "physics" is enough, apparently)
VMG 15y ago
Sequence, Information and Fact seem to be big attractors
- stcredzero 15y ago
  I wonder what the attractors are for Conservapedia?
klbarry 15y ago
I got stuck on loops each time I tried it, and figured he made it up. Damn.
cjzhang 15y ago
It's not funny if you edit the articles and remove links to force it to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Set_%28mathematics%29&action=historysubmit&diff=431041716&oldid=427973404 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Set_%28mathematics...
clemesha 15y ago
Related: http://TheWikiGame.com http://TheWikiGame.com (I built this app, it's made with using django, xmpp, and almost every datatype that Redis provides)
6ren 15y ago
recursion 1. Recursive 2. Recursion uh oh... found a loop recursion -> recursive -> recursion.
- Spikefu 15y ago
  Recursion, self-similar, mathematics, quantity, property, modern philosophy, philosophy Assuming you don't include the links in the "lacks inline citations" box on the recursion page.
bena 15y ago
Two problems. It favors links in the sidebar over article links. I was in "Human" and your script picked out Pre-Cambrian when it should have been Taxonomy. Second, capitalization matters. It couldn't find "the black keys" but it found "The Black Keys". It's pretty obvious in hindsight when you think about it. You start with something specific and then get more and more vague until you hit Philosophy.
ddkrone 15y ago
Why do they all go through Mathematics?
alanfalcon 15y ago
I'm quite surprised at how many steps it takes to get from Isaac_Newton to Philosophy (31). I'd expected that would be a quick one. I guess that's just a quirk of the "first link" rule though.
- shekmalhen 15y ago
  Justin Bieber: 18 steps. I don't know if it is a good thing or not.
stcredzero 15y ago
Funny, but the attractor for Conservapedia seems to be "nation". http://www.conservapedia.com/Nation http://www.conservapedia.com/Nation I suspect that's also one of the most common non-stop words on "The Colbert Report".
joshmaker 15y ago
From my limited clicks, it seems like both science and mathematics are even faster to get to in this method than philosophy.
ctdonath 15y ago
Anyone try generating a map of Wikipedia?
vacri 15y ago
'music', 'art', 'war' are examples of non-esoteric terms that don't end up at philosophy. 'libertarianism' doesn't end up at philosophy either :) Though I'm noticing that even before 'mathematics', all my meme-true queries are going through 'science' also... 'philosopher' doesn't go through via the script page, but on the actual wiki it's redirected straight to 'philosphy'. Fun page, nice work.
- InclinedPlane 15y ago
  Are you sure you're doing it right? music -> art -> sense -> perception -> awareness -> consciousness -> mind -> panpsychism -> philosophy war -> conflict -> social behaviour -> physics -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> facts -> information -> sequence -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy -> philosophy
  - vacri 15y ago
    I'm just going off what the linked page gives me. music music dance art_form senses perception eastern_philosophy islamic_philosophy islamic_studies islamic_history history george_santayana madrid spain balearic_islands catalan_language (loop to spain) war war military_history (loop to war) it seems that the script in the main article isn't using the same pages we are
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      The tool is broken. It's picking up links from the side bar instead of from the main article, since those links show up in the source first.
Fuzzwah 15y ago
Why does searching for cannabis just reload the page? I do admit that when it came back and the text entry box was empty I'd already forgotten what I was trying to search for. It wasn't until the next joint when I thought of trying it again that I recalled it had happened previously.
GrandMasterBirt 15y ago
"nuke" goes in a loop war -> mil history -> war -> etc.
iamdave 15y ago
SPOILER ALERT* Douglas Adams is not 42 links away from Philosophy, sorry :(
- jrgnsd 15y ago
  Does this mean the world is about to be blown up by the Vogon's?
meatsock 15y ago
the routes should be affected not by selecting the first link on the page but a weighted probability based on the number of clicks each link on the page gets to the other in-subject links in the body. also sometimes it counts links in sidebars as first, i think that's unintentional.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
deltasquared 15y ago
Found a loop: Start at Reiki reiki spiritual_practice spirituality reality being eastern_philosophy islamic_philosophy islamic_studies islamic_history history george_santayana madrid spain balearic_islands catalan_language uh oh... found a loop spain -> balearic_islands -> catalan_language -> spain . So this game is traversing a cyclic graph. It should be possible to get around this by keeping track of visited links, and not repeating our clicks. Now is Wikipedia a connected graph?
chanux 15y ago
I got stuck in an infinite loop starting from Firefox.
jordaninternets 15y ago
It worked when I tried it with Power Rangers.

That "Wikipedia Trivia" is really intriguing! Manually tested and verified it.

Deestan 15y ago
I know I'm being pedantic here, but I'm pretty sure you haven't verified it. To do that, you would have to visit every Wikipedia article.

That's 'cause Philosophy covers it all: "Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language." --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

lloeki 15y ago
Too bad there's no Philosophy in http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
- davidcuddeback 15y ago
  Especially since a common path is to reach philosophy by first visiting the mathematics page: Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy
dchest 15y ago
Or, in other terms: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hgkdl/mindblown/c1v8fyp http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hgkdl/mindblown/c1v8fy...

selectnull 15y ago

And xkcd itself is "18 steps to philosophy"...

lloeki 15y ago
So is "Potato" and "Caen", and the majority of other things I tried. For Godwin points, "Hitler" is only 14 steps.
thalur 15y ago
I don't think it works correctly though... it uses "Author" as the first link whereas the first link in the text of the article is "webcomic" ("Author" is in the summary pannel on the side) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xkcd https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Xkcd
- lloeki 15y ago
  The same happens for cities or locations, where there is usually a "Coordinates" in the upper right corner. Still, I did it manually in text bodies, and you eventually end up to Science or Mathematics, which leads to Philosophy.
- seppo0010 15y ago
  It seems to be taking the right panel first. Same thing happened to me with Trade[1], leaded to San Juan de Dios Market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buying http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buying

camtarn 15y ago

Hah. The hypothesis is false, but the script already has that covered via loop detection... nice :) panhard Auverland Panhard uh oh... found a loop panhard -> auverland -> panhard. So far the longest trail I've found, at 25 steps, was from 'ED209' via pottery, through minerals, states of matter, knowledge, finite sets, mathematics... that's one heck of a wikitrail. [edit] Scratch that, 'Horst link' is longer via one step, going via transport, commerce, San Juan de Dios Market, Mexico, Romance languages, Precambrian, Chronology, etc...

shrikant 15y ago
"Beans" is 28 steps..
iopuy 15y ago
30 for "Howard Hughes" uh oh... found a loop mathematics -> quantity -> property_(philosophy) -> modern_philosophy -> western_europe -> europe -> continent -> landmass -> landform -> earth_sciences -> science -> knowledge -> fact -> information -> finite_set -> mathematics.
- shadowpwner 15y ago
  Its supposed to stop at philosophy..
- adsr 15y ago
  Makes sense for mathematics to be a loop since it's a self contained system.
- kd0amg 15y ago
  modern_philosophy -> western_europe Looks like "philosophy" is the first link on the "Modern philosophy" page (and was last week when I first tried this). http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&oldid=430354556 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&...
  - ceejayoz 15y ago

hamner 15y ago

By extension, you also will always end up at ... Existence Sense Organism Biology Natural_science Science Knowledge Fact Information Finite_set Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy

moconnor 15y ago

It seems to take a while to search; are you querying wikipedia each step instead of a DB snapshot?

tim_iles 15y ago
Last time I downloaded Wikipedia, it was 4.5GB. If I were to knock up this hack, I would definitely scrape pages instead.
- blahedo 15y ago
  On-demand page scrape + memoisation is almost certainly a win here. Even if thousands of people are hitting this, a lot will choose some of the same queries (I'm sure Kevin Bacon and xkcd and philosophy are in there a bunch), especially in the tails of the paths (Latin, Mathematics, ...)

hencq 15y ago

Nice tool :-) It seems to also take words between parentheses though I think. For example on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland I would expect it to follow European not Icelandic.

zyfo 15y ago

This image shows how things end up in Philosophy, by XKCD forumite arotenbe: http://forums.xkcd.com/download/file.php?id=29727&mode=view http://forums.xkcd.com/download/file.php?id=29727&mode=v... Looking at these stats shows how viral this meme/trivia got: http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Philosophy http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Philosophy http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Mathematics http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Mathematics http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Reason http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Reason I posted these stats on a FB status a couple of days ago because of the sudden spike. Now that sudden spike looks small compared to today's sudden spike. Funny how there's different levels of viral, almost akin to different levels of infinite. What would happen if this hit mainstream media?

joejohnson 15y ago
On that chart, Greeks points to to other pages. How can Greeks have two first links?
- sophacles 15y ago
  Schroedinger wrote that page.
- SoftwareMaven 15y ago
  That was my question, too. There doesn't seem to be a disambiguation that would apply, either. "Greek Language" shouldn't point to "Indo-European languages", it should point to "Greeks". I can't figure out how that went wrong, either, but it is interesting to see a cycle in an acyclic graph. :)

jrockway 15y ago

Ironically, it doesn't work from "Spark Plug".

assemble 15y ago
Strange, it did for me yesterday. Edit: Modern Philosophy seems to be missing the link to Philosophy, which should be there according to the edit history (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&diff=next&oldid=430354556 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Modern_philosophy&...).
- gnoupi 15y ago
  Apparently some kid was having fun vandalizing the page to break this. The page is semi-protected now, so it should be ok from now on.

dspillett 15y ago

Excellent. Saved me some clicking resulting in more efficient use of procrastination time! I hit loops a few times - you could drop to the second link in those cases instead of stopping completely.

eru 15y ago
If you drop out of loops, you will reach every article eventually. (Unless you are ending in a cul de sac.)
- dspillett 15y ago
  If the draw to "philosophy" is as string at it seems you should end up there without scanning too many articles. You'd need some sort of fixed cap to avoid the few cases where you'd end up scanning thousands of articles, of course.

lloeki 15y ago

Wow, someone just modified Modern Philosophy (now first link is Western Europe), Science and/or Knowledge pages, which makes most previously things tried by me kick into a 25 loop. I'm wondering if it's intentional.

hugh3 15y ago
Most things were getting stuck in a loop around "Indo-European languages" last time I checked. Someone is definitely playing silly buggers. I was tempted to see whether I could somehow engineer an all-roads-lead-to-goatse situation, but I couldn't think of a plausible pathway.
- eru 15y ago
  Just hijack Philosophy.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    Too easy. The idea was to create an entirely plausible pathway of links that nobody could complain about individually (so they wouldn't get reverted) which nonetheless eventually led to http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goatse
    - eru 15y ago
      I mean, create that plausible pathway with philosophy as its root. Since so many articles already lead to philosophy, it's a good starting point.

docmarionum1 15y ago

Modern Philosophy now goes to Western Europe rather than Philosophy. And since everything seems to go through that, nothing will reach philosophy anymore.

p4bl0 15y ago

An article[1] from the Xamuel.com's blog predates the xkcd stripe by a few days and states the sames things but with mathematics instead of philosophy. Also their's some fun with second links. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573038 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573038

araneae 15y ago
And the version using philosophy appeared on Reddit before the comic as well: http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/hgwbe/on_wikipedia_all_roads_lead_to_philosophy/ http://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/hgwbe/on_wikiped...

Fargren 15y ago

You don't reach Philosophy from Philosophy.

9ec4c12949a4f3 15y ago
I did. Took 15 steps however.
mauriciob 15y ago
Yes, you do. 15 steps.
malvim 15y ago
Hey, I did! Did it using the software and then checked wikipedia by hand: Philosophy -> Existence -> Sense -> Organism -> Biology -> Natural_science -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Finite_set -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property_(philosophy) -> Modern_philosophy -> Philosophy 15 steps to philosophy
- dkersten 15y ago
  The "Quantity" article did not contain the link to Property_(philosophy) before and it was added purely for the sake of this game. See the talk page for more details. Personally, I think its sad that people are editing wikipedia purely for the sake of making games work out.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

orblivion 15y ago

It totally worked for me, I tried it with Sausage and Cradle of Filth. I thought it was a joke, it blew me away. But then I found that "Osama Bin Laden" crossed "philosophers" and then ended on a loop between "reason" and "rationality". EDIT: I just tried "Osama Bin Laden", the steps it takes seems to be using a slightly different Wikipedia than I see.

bad_user 15y ago
I tried OOP, eventually arriving at Philosophy -- OMG, it works :))

ck2 15y ago

Also try turning off spell check or writing something significant on paper and see how well we do these days.

camiller 15y ago
Actually spell check, has made me a better speller. Of course in the old days when the apple ][ dominated the personal computer space you had to save your word processing file, exit the word processor, switch floppy disks, start the spell checker, switch the disk for the dictionary disk, run against your file, approve/reject suggested changes, save the file, exit the spell checker, switch to the floppy disk with the word processor on it, start the word processor load your file, find the things the spell checker flagged as wrong but couldn't find a correct word for and fix those. Seriously, it was just easier to get better at spelling.

joshklein 15y ago

This is no joke: 21 clicks from Kevin Bacon to Philosophy. Welcome to the Internet equivalent of a child repeatedly asking, "why?"

neurolysis 15y ago
Three, actually. Kevin Bacon > Meme > Philosophy.
- sophacles 15y ago
  This statement shows a gross misunderstanding of the rules. Meme is quite far down the page. It is well after many links that are neither italicized nor inside parens. The statement whose veracity is being checked says First link (plus some other parameters).
malloc 15y ago
minor correction: 20 clicks
sophacles 15y ago
This shows a that the program linked is broken. The steps taken, are: 1. Animal House 2. .... Going to the actual Kevin Bacon Wikipedia page, Animal House is clearly italic. The First non-italic, top-level (wrt parens) is Golden Globe
- m_myers 15y ago
  It took me 30 steps to do it manually, following the correct rules.
- chad_oliver 15y ago
  I expect the program is working off an out-of-date database. Hitting wikipedia directly would be rather bad form.
billpaetzke 15y ago
Haha ya, it's crazy. I went to Wikipeida.com, clicked on a random link (Ratko_Mladić), and from there it took me 26 clicks of first links to reach the Philosophy page.

gizzlon 15y ago

15 stepf from Philosophy to Philosophy .. what are the implications?

mtodd 15y ago

Bastard beat me to it! Friend of mine was graphing out all of the connections (using Graphviz) and found some interesting patterns. Ultimately you can say the same thing for "Science", "Knowledge", and even "Mathematics".

chrislloyd 15y ago

A few years ago at Railscamp in Australia, Andrew Grimm proved this exact outcome. His code is here: https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-dump-parser https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-dump-parser and https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-navigation https://github.com/agrimm/philosophy-navigation.

albertsun 15y ago

I tried it with Iraq, but the page parsing is slightly wrong. Got this result. Iraq Arabic_language Languages Human Precambrian Eon_(geology) Chronology Time Measurement Magnitude_(mathematics) Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 12 steps to philosophy But the link to Arabic is in parentheses. The first non-parenthesesed link is to Western Asia.

phillijw 15y ago

turtles --> 14 steps to philosophy

mbubb 15y ago

Fun Interesting that the first three i tried took about 17 hops and got funnelled through the "Life" entry. corndog sensimilia halitosis This took a few less hops and stayed in 'techne': voip. Would love to see these searches graphed. Years ago - one of my favorite sites was Everything2 (still up) - it was run on the slashdot engine. The fun of it was to follow the associated links at the bottom of the entry to see where it would take you.

camtarn 15y ago
E2 was wonderful for links teleporting you off into completely unrelated and equally fascinating subjects - I lost many an evening in that manner :)
oldminer 15y ago
Slashdot used to link to Everything (back before it was Everything2) as a sort of instant-dictionary for tech terms. Stories would have something like "RSS 2.0(?) and Atom(?) proponents are squaring off..." with the question marks going to the relevant Everything node. Most of the time, the terms wouldn't be defined until the story went live, and then they would be in short order. It was a neat symbiosis, especially back before Wikipedia existed. However, they were separate sites. Both Slashcode (which runs Slashdot) and the Everything Engine (which runs Everything2) are written in Perl. Everything was never run on Slashcode, though, AFAIK.

bluekeybox 15y ago

I tried and I end up in an infinite loop between science, philosophy, knowledge/epistemology, and language.

Sukotto 15y ago
"philosophy" is the halting condition

mildweed 15y ago

http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki?title=xkcd http://ryanelmquist.com/cgi-bin/xkcdwiki?title=xkcd

blago 15y ago

I did this a while ago with node.js: http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill

blago 15y ago
source code: https://github.com/dachev/node-lab https://github.com/dachev/node-lab

nickolai 15y ago

XKCD Webcomic Comics Graphic Visual_perception Visible_light Electromagnetic_radiation Energy Physics Natural_science Science Knowledge Fact Information Sequence Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 19 steps to philosophy

rufibarbatus 15y ago
Main_Page is currently taking 19 steps too. (According to the program—other comments here point out that it may be ignoring the comic's rules.)
billpaetzke 15y ago
I wonder if we could say everything leads to science. I also reached philosophy via science. Ratko Mladic (randomly chosen from wikipedia homepage) Army of Republika Srpska Military Use of force Conflict resolution Negotiation Dialogue Literature Fiction Narrative Latin Italic languages Indo-European languages Language family Language Human Taxonomy Science Knowledge Fact Information Sequence Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy
- toponium 15y ago
  emacs doesn't traverse through science but does hit computer science emacs text_editor software_application computer_software computer_program instruction_(computer_science) computer_architecture computer_science information sequence mathematics quantity property_(philosophy) modern_philosophy philosophy

joejohnson 15y ago

Can anyone find a path that doesn't end with: ... Mathematics Quantity Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy

SpacemanSpiff 15y ago
cessna_172 Fixed-wing_aircraft Aircraft Vehicles Bicycle Human-powered_transport Transport Cargo Commerce Buying San_Juan_de_Dios_Market Guadalajara,_Jalisco States_of_Mexico Mexico Spanish_language Romance_languages Indo-European_languages Language_family Language Human Precambrian Eon_(geology) Chronology Time Measurement Magnitude_(mathematics) Property_(philosophy) Modern_philosophy Philosophy 28 steps to philosophy
garyrichardson 15y ago
Barrack Obama: barrack_obama List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States United_States_Constitution Supreme_law State_(polity) Social_sciences Field_of_study Academia Community Interacting Action_(philosophy) Philosophy

jimmyjazz14 15y ago

Appears you almost always get there via Mathematics though.

michaelleland 15y ago

1)ruby_on_rails 2)Open_source 3)Philosophy

conradev 15y ago

Theres a Wikipedia page on it, it works on 93% of all articles. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy

lostbit 15y ago
Yes. It dates back to 2008. Interesting that someone got bugged by it that time and just now it took this dimension.

SeoxyS 15y ago

Xkcd succeeded in making me waste 20min yesterday clicking links on Wikipedia checking whether it was actually true. I wish I had had this tool then!

Deestan 15y ago
On the other hand, would you have spent less than 20 minutes playing with the tool?

tobylane 15y ago

I just spent about 20 minutes trying to get anything more than 20. Wikipedia has the answer, as to not spoil here's a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy#Chains http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy#Cha... I like the last loop on the article not crossed out.

jrockway 15y ago
Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy is not what xkcd is describing, though. That page seems to allow any link to be chosen. xkcd says, "click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics". For example, Wikipedia:_Get_to_Philosophy provides the example, Optimum "L" filter -> Butterworth filter. But the first link in 'Optimum "L" filter' is "Athanasios Papoulis".
mikeleeorg 15y ago
Same here. I finally got it with the word "Coprophagia". 21 steps. I feel oddly proud. (It came from a conversation some friends and I had about kopi luwak, just to explain why I tried this obscure word).

ignifero 15y ago

As of 2008, the center of English Wikipedia is the article 2007. From that article, it takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2,111,479 articles reachable from it. Disregarding all of the articles that are just lists, years or days of the year, the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom, at an average of 3.45 clicks to anywhere else. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation#Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation#Wikip...

JonnieCache 15y ago
>the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom I find this absolutely fascinating. Consider that the reason we're at the centre of the world map is because we had the power to choose to put ourselves there, at the point in history when the maps were being drawn. Is that imperial influence, long since waned, still echoing across the years, visible in the wikipedia graph?
- ignifero 15y ago
  OR, it's just because they used the English wikipedia for it
  - JonnieCache 15y ago
    Hah, good point. I wasn't trying to be triumphalist, though I admit it certainly reads that way.

andrewflnr 15y ago

Hmm, doesn't work for cryovolcanism.

VengefulCynic 15y ago

The current version appears to dislike unicode characters. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Dobrovi%C4%87 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Dobrovi%C4%87 causes an error.

riffraff 15y ago

I find fascinating that if you end up on "Mathematics_education" than you have no chance of getting to "philosophy". (or "physics" is enough, apparently)

VMG 15y ago

Sequence, Information and Fact seem to be big attractors

stcredzero 15y ago
I wonder what the attractors are for Conservapedia?

klbarry 15y ago

I got stuck on loops each time I tried it, and figured he made it up. Damn.

cjzhang 15y ago

It's not funny if you edit the articles and remove links to force it to be true. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Set_%28mathematics%29&action=historysubmit&diff=431041716&oldid=427973404 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Set_%28mathematics...

clemesha 15y ago

Related: http://TheWikiGame.com http://TheWikiGame.com (I built this app, it's made with using django, xmpp, and almost every datatype that Redis provides)

6ren 15y ago

recursion 1. Recursive 2. Recursion uh oh... found a loop recursion -> recursive -> recursion.

Spikefu 15y ago
Recursion, self-similar, mathematics, quantity, property, modern philosophy, philosophy Assuming you don't include the links in the "lacks inline citations" box on the recursion page.

bena 15y ago

Two problems. It favors links in the sidebar over article links. I was in "Human" and your script picked out Pre-Cambrian when it should have been Taxonomy. Second, capitalization matters. It couldn't find "the black keys" but it found "The Black Keys". It's pretty obvious in hindsight when you think about it. You start with something specific and then get more and more vague until you hit Philosophy.

ddkrone 15y ago

Why do they all go through Mathematics?

alanfalcon 15y ago

I'm quite surprised at how many steps it takes to get from Isaac_Newton to Philosophy (31). I'd expected that would be a quick one. I guess that's just a quirk of the "first link" rule though.

shekmalhen 15y ago
Justin Bieber: 18 steps. I don't know if it is a good thing or not.

stcredzero 15y ago

Funny, but the attractor for Conservapedia seems to be "nation". http://www.conservapedia.com/Nation http://www.conservapedia.com/Nation I suspect that's also one of the most common non-stop words on "The Colbert Report".

joshmaker 15y ago

From my limited clicks, it seems like both science and mathematics are even faster to get to in this method than philosophy.

ctdonath 15y ago

Anyone try generating a map of Wikipedia?

vacri 15y ago

'music', 'art', 'war' are examples of non-esoteric terms that don't end up at philosophy. 'libertarianism' doesn't end up at philosophy either :) Though I'm noticing that even before 'mathematics', all my meme-true queries are going through 'science' also... 'philosopher' doesn't go through via the script page, but on the actual wiki it's redirected straight to 'philosphy'. Fun page, nice work.

InclinedPlane 15y ago
Are you sure you're doing it right? music -> art -> sense -> perception -> awareness -> consciousness -> mind -> panpsychism -> philosophy war -> conflict -> social behaviour -> physics -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> facts -> information -> sequence -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy -> philosophy
- vacri 15y ago
  I'm just going off what the linked page gives me. music music dance art_form senses perception eastern_philosophy islamic_philosophy islamic_studies islamic_history history george_santayana madrid spain balearic_islands catalan_language (loop to spain) war war military_history (loop to war) it seems that the script in the main article isn't using the same pages we are
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    The tool is broken. It's picking up links from the side bar instead of from the main article, since those links show up in the source first.

Fuzzwah 15y ago

Why does searching for cannabis just reload the page? I do admit that when it came back and the text entry box was empty I'd already forgotten what I was trying to search for. It wasn't until the next joint when I thought of trying it again that I recalled it had happened previously.

GrandMasterBirt 15y ago

"nuke" goes in a loop war -> mil history -> war -> etc.

iamdave 15y ago

SPOILER ALERT* Douglas Adams is not 42 links away from Philosophy, sorry :(

jrgnsd 15y ago
Does this mean the world is about to be blown up by the Vogon's?

meatsock 15y ago

the routes should be affected not by selecting the first link on the page but a weighted probability based on the number of clicks each link on the page gets to the other in-subject links in the body. also sometimes it counts links in sidebars as first, i think that's unintentional.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

deltasquared 15y ago

Found a loop: Start at Reiki reiki spiritual_practice spirituality reality being eastern_philosophy islamic_philosophy islamic_studies islamic_history history george_santayana madrid spain balearic_islands catalan_language uh oh... found a loop spain -> balearic_islands -> catalan_language -> spain . So this game is traversing a cyclic graph. It should be possible to get around this by keeping track of visited links, and not repeating our clicks. Now is Wikipedia a connected graph?

chanux 15y ago

I got stuck in an infinite loop starting from Firefox.

jordaninternets 15y ago

It worked when I tried it with Power Rangers.