
Do all first links on Wikipedia lead to philosophy? - tbull007
http://matpalm.com/blog/2011/08/13/wikipedia-philosophy/
======
westicle
Project HN: Identify all non-confirming Wikipedia articles and edit them to
fit the pattern.

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JoshTriplett
Someone previously created a "steps to philosophy" site
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2587352>), but it seems to have
vanished.

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preamble
Already been done 5 months ago at <http://www.xefer.com/>

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RobertHubert
Seeing as we humans ceated Wikipedia perhaps in an effort to define and
describe everything there is, the product ends up filtered through the lenses
of it's creators and in doing so we inevitably end up defining what it is to
be human. I dont believe we can understand or describe anything beyond what it
is we are. Wikipedia is essentially the accumulation of the collective
knowledge of it's creators so what else should we expect it to be outside of
the definition of what it is to be man. The attempt to collect and master the
understanding of everything is afterall a philosophic endeavor. Done babbling
now lol.

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gsivil
I was about to to link to previous discussions of the same claim/question

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592522>

But then I read the article... Very nice!

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cormullion
Then, can you get from Philosophy to Mornington Crescent?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikington_Crescent>

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duien
By the time I looked at this, the end path had changed, as "Fact" now leads to
"Truth" instead of "Information". How long until someone intentionally
manipulates the chain?

~~~
mat_kelcey
I was using the 2011-07-22 set so the data's already a bit stale...

~~~
starwed
When I first read the xkcd comic, I was amused that the article on philosophy
didn't lead to itself. (It got trapped in a 2-cycle.)

Then I noticed that this was only because of an edit someone had made earlier
in the day...

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stonemetal
When the question came up on XKCD a little while ago the answer is "no there
are several loops that don't loop through philosophy". On a more conceptual
level what does it mean to lead to philosophy? First links on Wikipedia do not
form a tree with philosophy as the root, after all philosophy has a first link
that is not itself. So we are looking at a graph and attempting to determine
if all random walks of the graph passes through point P.

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RobertHubert
Just tested it for the hell of it, started with "FireFighter", thought it was
random... and 30 clicks later landed on Philosophy! Fun stuff.

~~~
RobertHubert
Tried the word Stupid... Just got stuck in a loop.

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

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RobertHubert
What about other sites like www.conservapedia.com or www.rationalwiki.org?

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

~~~
atomicdog
On Conversvapedia everything eventually leads to "Ronald Reagan".

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blago
You can try it for yourself: <http://blago.dachev.com/wikidrill>

~~~
atomicdog
The default first entry, "Human", doesn't even reach "philosophy" before the
maximum of 50 steps is reached. Kinda blows a hole in the theory...

~~~
glassx
It does: Human -> Living -> Biology -> Natural Science -> Branch -> Knowledge
-> Facts -> Truth -> Reality -> Philosophy

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whacker
A lot of them do, but sometimes there are loops (Eg. Computer Science). If you
make an exception, choosing the second link for example, then it will lead you
to philosophy.

~~~
atomicdog
If you make exceptions indiscriminately it will lead you to anything.

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clemesha
Related: <http://TheWikiGame.com> (multiplayer game of connecting Wikipedia
articles with different constraints)

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fezzl
It even worked when I tried "Stone Cold Steve Austin"...

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yxhuvud
But which of the twelve has the lowest average length? The article points to
'science', but how would the number of steps graph look then?

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clownzor
I found a few that didn't go to philosophy back when the comic came out. My
favorite: Han Solo -> Harrison Ford -> Han Solo...

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bluekeybox
Why philosophy? If you keep clicking, you actually end up in a loop:
Philosophy -> Reason -> Human nature -> Thought -> Consciousness -> Mind ->
Panpsychism -> Philosophy -> ...

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

~~~
dimmuborgir
Saying _"you cannot have philosophy without a mind"_ itself is one of the many
philosophical concepts of mind-matter dualism.

~~~
bluekeybox
And saying what you just said is using reason.

~~~
dimmuborgir
Reason or intuition! That's another _'philosophical'_ problem!

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RobertHubert
Start: Wikipedia -> free -> artwork -> Aesthetics -> Philosophy. 4 clicks
away.

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atomicdog
Nope. You can get stuck in loops pretty easily.

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maeon3
Community -> Living -> Life -> Physical body -> Physics -> Natural science ->
Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics ->
Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy

It's kind of like zooming in on what it means means to be alive in this
universe. The fact that it ends at Philosophy is profound glimpse into what it
means to be a thinking entity in the universe.

If we ever meet Aliens from another part of the galaxy, they would no doubt
form similar knowledge structures that would probably end up being exactly
like this. Their Wikipedias would end at Philosophy as well.

~~~
burgerbrain
I think it has more to do with how encyclopedia articles are formatted. The
first sentence always describes the broader subject which the topic resides
in. I view it more as zooming out from topics that matter, each time you do so
you lose resolution and only see a fuzzier image.

~~~
Retric
I think it has more to do with where people end the chain,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature> is after philosophy.

Community -> Living -> Life -> Physical body -> Physics -> Natural science ->
Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics ->
Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy ->
_Reason - > Human Nature_ -> Thought ->... The fact that
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism> tends to be the last part of the
chain before it repeats is just less interesting.

PS: I suspect that most articles can be reached by every other article so you
can take just about anything and say it's the "root" article for the rest of
Wikipedia.

~~~
michael_dorfman
_PS: I suspect that most articles can be reached by every other article so you
can take just about anything and say it's the "root" article for the rest of
Wikipedia._

Most articles can be reached by every other article, but _not if you are only
following the first link_. You can make a case that anything on the chain that
leads from Philosophy back to Philosophy is the root, but anything outside of
that is going to be tough to argue, in my opinion.

~~~
Retric
With that metric Philosophy is just one of a chain that ~99% of articles link
to, looking at this graphs science or math is probably going to have a lower
average chain length.

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dwyer
Bob Dylan -> 1960s in music -> Popular music -> Music genre -> Genre ->
Literature -> Art -> Senses -> Physiology -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact ->
Truth -> Reality -> Philosophy

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p9idf
the author doesn't capitalize his sentences. i didn't find it difficult to
read and only noticed halfway through the article. supposedly, capitalized
sentences are easier to read, so i wonder if i've been conditioned by the
internet to find uncapitalized sentences easy to read as well. off-topic, but
interesting.

~~~
mat_kelcey
oh your irony...

