Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#91

Post by billpaetzke » Thu, May 26, 2011, 5:17 PM UTC

nickolai wrote: post #61

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

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

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#92

Post by riffraff » Thu, May 26, 2011, 5:18 PM UTC

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)

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#93

Post by danielrhodes » Thu, May 26, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

camtarn wrote: post #5

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…

I found a loop for Jersey Shore. I guess that sounds about right though.

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#94

Post by VMG » Thu, May 26, 2011, 5:31 PM UTC

Sequence, Information and Fact seem to be big attractors

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#95

Post by klbarry » Thu, May 26, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

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

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#96

Post by cjzhang » Thu, May 26, 2011, 6:08 PM UTC

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...

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#97

Post by clemesha » Thu, May 26, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

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

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#98

Post by sophacles » Thu, May 26, 2011, 6:30 PM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #64

zyfo wrote: post #12

This image shows how things end up in Philosophy, by XKCD forumite arotenbe: 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/Mathematics 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 sudd…

On that chart, Greeks points to to other pages. How can Greeks have two first links?

Schroedinger wrote that page.

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#99

Post by 6ren » Thu, May 26, 2011, 6:43 PM UTC

    recursion

       1. Recursive
       2. Recursion

    uh oh... found a loop

    recursion -> recursive -> recursion.

Re: Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

#100

Post by bena » Thu, May 26, 2011, 7:21 PM UTC

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.