Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#41

Post by njharman » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:21 PM UTC

I love wiki. I spend hours following links. Having loops is a feature or else I might never stop.

Greek City States ->

  Polis
  City
  Human settlement
  Statistics
  Data
  Level of measurement
  Stanley Smith Stevens
  United States
  Federalism
  Politics
  Art
  Human behavior
  Behavior
  Organism
  Biology
  Natural science
  Science
  Knowledge
  Fact
  Proof (truth)
  Argument
  Philosophy
  Problem
  Doubt
  Belief
  Proposition loops to Philosophy

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#42

Post by zerostar07 » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:22 PM UTC

In another time it would lead to "God"

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#43

Post by johnbender » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:23 PM UTC

This may be hyper naive but is this the consequence of beginning most articles representing the current topic as a more specific form of another topic?

For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebra

"Algebra ... is a branch of mathematics." (mathematics being a link)

So if you continue to generalize you'll end up at the most general subject which appears to be philosophy.

[update] added an example

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#44

Post by leh0n » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:25 PM UTC

http://wikiloopr.com/Gate%20City%20Bank I think this one is bugged haha

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#45

Post by jfoutz » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:26 PM UTC

lbarrow wrote: post #39

From a mathematical perspective, this is actually not that surprising. Think of the act of clicking the first link in the Wikipedia article as a function that takes in the page you're on and outputs another page. If you call this function on itself over and over again (ie use the output of one step as in the input of the next step), you will eventually enter a loop. The proof of this is simple: there are only a finit…

After the first few runs, i'm kinda surprised it's not a fixed point at Philosophy.

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#46

Post by pattern » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:27 PM UTC

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #35

encoderer wrote: post #19

This is beautiful. I've always thought sites like IMDB and Wikipedia are hypertext expressions of the purest form. As a nerdy kid, over a few years I read my way through a significant chunk of the early 1990's Groliers Encyclopedia set my Grandma bought me at Krogers. And it was never cover-to-cover reading, instead it was filled with hopping around, page-to-page, volume-to-volume. Start at oscilloscope, but what's a…

Ah yes. To me (to my productivity's detriment...) quite often when I visit Wikipedia it becomes a learning adventure. From one thing you can hop to the other, finding out all sorts of interesting and obscure things. To a curious mind like mine, Wikipedia is heaven!

For myself, I would broaden this and say that almost every link I visit on HN, or every forum post I read leads to more than 1 additional link. Thus three windows of Chrome open with 10+ tabs each :)

I find this drill-down effect to be quite illuminating, if not productive. Strangely, it seems to provide both depth and breadth of topics in relatively equal measures.

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#47

Post by strongriley » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:28 PM UTC

I think I beat it... http://wikiloopr.com/Caterham%20CSR

Re: Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop

#48

Post by calvinlough » Fri, Aug 31, 2012, 4:30 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #17

Aldor wrote: post #8

http://wikiloopr.com/texting Yay! FInally found one that doesn't work.

That loops between philosophy and preposition.