A recent edition of xkcd, my favorite webcomic, had a caption that said "Wikipedia triva: If you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at 'Philosophy.'"

I decided to put this to the test, and it worked! After clicking on 'random article', here is my journey.

Simone Michel-Lévy
French Resistance
Resistance movement
Invasion
Offensive (military)
Military strategy
Military organization
State (polity)
Social sciences
List of academic disciplines
Academia
Community
Interaction
Causality
Event
Observable
Physics
Natural science
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Information
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy

Any comments, anyone else want to give it a try?

Hitchikers Guide does it in about ten.

I've tried it a couple times and it always worked. If you actually start the procedure from the Philosophy article you end up looping back to it.

Amusingly, once you get to philosophy, you end up in a loop where you end up back at philosophy after a couple clicks. Wonder how he found that out?

EDIT: ninja'd :ninja:

Valkyria Chronicles
Tactical role-playing game
Video game
Electronic game
Game
Play (activity)
Ethology
Zoology
Biology
Natural science

And from then on, it's the same as your list. So maybe it's not Philosophy, but Science, or Knowledge, or Fact?

Note: This trick doesn't always work, either. A lot of the time articles are worded in such ways that you end up in a loop. I don't remember exactly, but a year or two ago I tried doing this (click first link of every article; I was bored) and ending up in a loop.

Tenth Island
Nature reserve
Protected area
Ecology
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Information
Sequence
Mathematics
Quantity
Property (philosophy)
Modern philosophy
Philosophy

It seems once you hit Science, you will go to Philosophy.

This isn't an XKCD trick, I heard about it at the end of last year...

I read that strip, but thought it was just a joke, not really possible. Going to try it out right now.

I was attempting it with my sister sitting next to me on the couch and ended up at bdsn. That wasn't awkward at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_mechanics

:whisper: it takes you to wiktionary, from which there is no escape :whisper:

:banghead:


...


:cookie:

"Middle English" is the first link that is not in parenthesis or italics

Well, from a mathematical viewpoint it's all of those. What's at issue here is the described process of getting from one Wikipedia article to the next, namely by clicking the first link in the article text which is not in parentheses or italics. Mathematically speaking, this can be called a function which acts on a set of all Wikipedia articles and maps on a (sub)set of all Wikipedia articles. As I've already said, clearly there is a cycle which at the moment of writing this post is:

• Philosophy
  
• Existence
  
• Sense
  
• Physiology
  
• Science
  
• Knowledge
  
• Fact
  
• Information
  
• Sequence
  
• Set (mathematics)
  
• Mathematics
  
• Quantity
  
• Property (philosophy)
  
• Modern philosophy
  
• Philosophy

Therefore, saying that repeating the process will lead you to Philosophy is equivalent to saying that it will lead you to Mathematics, or Fact, or Science, or Knowledge, or any of the articles from this cycle. Of course, once you realise this, this finding is not so mysterious or interesting at all, because at least to me it seems pretty obvious that clicking the first link in articles will in nearly all cases eventually lead you to one of the articles from the above cycle, thereafter leading you to Philosophy as well.


Actually, there is, you just have to follow the same rule.

• Game Mechanics
  
• rule (@ Wiktionary)
  
• Middle English
  
• History of the English language
  
• English language
  
• West Germanic languages
  
• Germanic languages
  
• Indo-European languages
  
• Language family
  
• Language
  
• Human
  
• Extant taxon
  
• Biology
  
• Natural science
  
• Science

And thus we've ended up within the above mentioned cycle.

Sorry but XKCD omitted the other rules, mainly the one that says only click Wikipedia links.

I got to Philosophy in about 30 from that...

Toy Story
Randy Newman
Disney
Online Media
Numerical bases
Decimal
Vulgar fractions
Solidus
ISO
International standard
Standardization
De facto standard
QWERTY
Typewriters
Machine
Energy
Physics
Natural science
Naturalism (philosophy)

Huh, it works.

The first link in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_science which is not within parentheses or in italics is to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science.

Also, finding an example for which it works doesn't prove that it always works. DEFRON has already almost broken it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics

Which came from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_mark.

Fine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_Aftermath

If you dislike that one, I can always find more dead-end articles.

It's whenever you hit any sort of mathematics or sciences that the actual sequence starts.

Nice. Which, unless there is an article which links to itself, is the smallest cycle.



Sorry Deffers, you've been beaten. Also, the above example is much better because the article you linked to will probably be deleted soon.

Depends on how old your sister is...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalyani_Nair, that said, the above one is indeed more elegant.

And like I said, you've been beaten. You can find thousands of dead-end articles, but you'll never be the first one to have broken it in this thread.

Silver's way cooler than gold anyway