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Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

ryanelmquist.com

111–120 of 139 posts

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

#111

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

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

I expect the program is working off an out-of-date database. Hitting wikipedia directly would be rather bad form.

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

#112

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

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.

When I first read the comic the other day, I went to the page in the comic (Spark Plug) and tried it -- didn't work, I ended up in a cycle between 3 math-related pages. Oops.

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

#115
post #44

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 w…

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.

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

#116
post #99

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

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.

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

#117
post #15
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…

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.

"Sushi" leads to a loop, too:

sushi japanese_cuisine japan japanese_language arabic_numerals symbol numeral_system mathematical_notation uh oh... found a loop

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

#118
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it finds a loop, can't it go and explore other paths?

Please spend 38.9 seconds trying to understand the very very very simple algorithm that says: Follow the first link that.. . It doesn't say there are alternate choices. If you went with a different link than the first, it would no longer be the first.

Well, it is Wikipedia. The program _could_ go to Wikipedia, edit a page in the loop, save, and continue :-)

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

#119

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 Pro…

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

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

#120
'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.

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