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Inspired by XKCD:903, Wikipedia steps to philosophy

ryanelmquist.com

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

#121

Post by JonnieCache »

ignifero wrote: post #81

As of 2008, the center of English Wikipedia is the article 2007. From that article, it takes on average 3.45 clicks to get to any of the 2,111,479 articles reachable from it. Disregarding all of the articles that are just lists, years or days of the year, the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom, at an average of 3.45 clicks to anywhere else. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separati…

>the "real article" closest to the center is United Kingdom

I find this absolutely fascinating. Consider that the reason we're at the centre of the world map is because we had the power to choose to put ourselves there, at the point in history when the maps were being drawn.

Is that imperial influence, long since waned, still echoing across the years, visible in the wikipedia graph?

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

#122

Post by InclinedPlane »

vacri wrote: post #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.

Are you sure you're doing it right?

music -> art -> sense -> perception -> awareness -> consciousness -> mind -> panpsychism -> philosophy

war -> conflict -> social behaviour -> physics -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> facts -> information -> sequence -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy -> philosophy

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

#123

Post by hugh3 »

eru wrote: post #78
hugh3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most things were getting stuck in a loop around "Indo-European languages" last time I checked. Someone is definitely playing silly buggers. I was tempted to see whether I could somehow engineer an all-roads-lead-to-goatse situation, but I couldn't think of a plausible pathway.

Just hijack Philosophy.

Too easy. The idea was to create an entirely plausible pathway of links that nobody could complain about individually (so they wouldn't get reverted) which nonetheless eventually led to http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/goatse

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

#124

Post by vacri »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #122
vacri wrote: post #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.

Are you sure you're doing it right? music -> art -> sense -> perception -> awareness -> consciousness -> mind -> panpsychism -> philosophy war -> conflict -> social behaviour -> physics -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> facts -> information -> sequence -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy -> philosophy

I'm just going off what the linked page gives me.

music

    music
    dance
    art_form
    senses
    perception
    eastern_philosophy
    islamic_philosophy
    islamic_studies
    islamic_history
    history
    george_santayana
    madrid
    spain
    balearic_islands
    catalan_language (loop to spain)
war

    war
    military_history (loop to war)
it seems that the script in the main article isn't using the same pages we are

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

#125

Post by Fuzzwah »

Why does searching for cannabis just reload the page? I do admit that when it came back and the text entry box was empty I'd already forgotten what I was trying to search for. It wasn't until the next joint when I thought of trying it again that I recalled it had happened previously.

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

#126

Post by InclinedPlane »

vacri wrote: post #124
InclinedPlane wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you're doing it right? music -> art -> sense -> perception -> awareness -> consciousness -> mind -> panpsychism -> philosophy war -> conflict -> social behaviour -> physics -> natural science -> science -> knowledge -> facts -> information -> sequence -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy -> philosophy

I'm just going off what the linked page gives me. music music dance art_form senses perception eastern_philosophy islamic_philosophy islamic_studies islamic_history history george_santayana madrid spain balearic_islands catalan_language (loop to spain) war war military_history (loop to war) it seems that the script in the main article isn't using the same pages we are

The tool is broken. It's picking up links from the side bar instead of from the main article, since those links show up in the source first.

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

#128

Post by idonthack »

kelnos wrote: post #112
billpaetzke wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

likely a result of subtle vandalism by other xkcd readers.
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