Randall Munroe was WRONG!

[cubinator]

https://xkcd.com/903/

Alt-text:

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

Now, I decided to test this. I went to a random Wikipedia page. I got "Knife Sharpening". My path: Knife Sharpening -> Knife -> Blade -> Tool -> Matter -> Atom -> Matter -> Atom -> Matter -> ...

It ends in an infinite loop! The "Philosophy" myth is a lie! I thought I'd share it with the community.

[Alphasus]

  On 5/16/2016 at 12:34 AM, cubinator said:

https://xkcd.com/903/

Alt-text:

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

Now, I decided to test this. I went to a random Wikipedia page. I got "Knife Sharpening". My path: Knife Sharpening -> Knife -> Blade -> Tool -> Matter -> Atom -> Matter -> Atom -> Matter -> ...

It ends in an infinite loop! The "Philosophy" myth is a lie! I thought I'd share it with the community.

Expand  

I did it with car, and got to philosophy through the mention of languages.

[cubinator]

  On 5/16/2016 at 12:59 AM, Alphasus said:

I did it with car, and got to philosophy through the mention of languages.

Expand  

Still, it's not ANY article. I'd be interested to see how many of them actually do that though.

[insert_name]

Works with the ksp page

[Guest]

You could just do this:

[ColKlonk]

That's a very small plug gap ??

IQ might be at 30 already :-)

[cantab]

The link to "atom" was added on the 8 May this year. So Randall was not necessarily wrong when he wrote his comic. Before that the first link was "light", and light will indeed currently take you to philosophy.

No edit reason is given for making "atom" a link, but quite possibly it was to break Randall's very prediction. Since there's no reason for it to NOT be a link, though, it's likely to stay this way.

 

[Shpaget]

The atom page starts with

  Quote

An atom is the smallest constituent unit of ordinary matter that has the properties of a chemical element.

Expand  

If you linkify the word "unit", the Randal's Wikipedia adage returns to being true.

[Tex Mechs Robot]

the "Mathematics" article is also an infinite loop. Mathematics -> Quantity -> Magnitude

[cubinator]

Is there a nice map of Wikipedia anywhere? Or a record of interesting patterns people have found? This is fascinating.

Edited May 16, 2016 by cubinator

[legoclone09]

You lied to me!

Edited May 17, 2016 by legoclone09

[mythbusters844]

  On 5/16/2016 at 8:10 PM, cubinator said:

Is there a nice map of Wikipedia anywhere? Or a record of interesting patterns people have found? This is fascinating.

Expand  

http://www.wikiloopr.com/

somewhat

[cubinator]

  On 5/17/2016 at 5:07 AM, mythbusters844 said:

http://www.wikiloopr.com/

somewhat

Expand  

Fun!

[Plusck]

  On 5/16/2016 at 7:32 PM, Tex Mechs Robot said:

the "Mathematics" article is also an infinite loop. Mathematics -> Quantity -> Magnitude

Expand  

Now it goes Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property -> Philosophy.

 

How many Wikipedia edits are being made to guarantee Randall's prophesies?

[Slam_Jones]

Huh, the version of this "theory" that I heard was that you could get to the page for Hitler from literally any other page, if only you click the right links (doesn't have to be the first link in the article).  Which is actually relatively easy, because any mention of a country that was involved in WWII will likely have such info on their page, ergo linking it, eventually, to Hitler.  And WWII affected a lot of countries... and even those it didn't were often still affected in some notable way.

The last time I tested it was (oh man, I feel old now) something like 7+ years ago... maybe longer...  Not sure if it still works, but as I recall it almost always worked.

Edited June 9, 2016 by Slam_Jones

[cantab]

I've heard that called the "Wikipedia Game", it's related but not the same thing. Sometimes with certain pages banned to make it not so easy.

[astrokerb]

It works if you click any link before the table of contents. 

Potato-Bolivia-Inca Empire-Argentina-Federalism-United States-Bill of Rights-United States Congress-Philadelphia-Immigration-Prosperity-Happiness-Philosphy

[Ultimate Steve]

According to the Wikipedia article on getting to the philosophy page on Wikipedia (yes, there is an article about that) about 95% of pages end in Philosophy. The others are dead ends or loops.