Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop(wikiloopr.com)
wikiloopr.com
Show HN: Most Wikipedia articles lead to the same loop
http://wikiloopr.com/
170 comments
The fact that many lead to the same loop(1) of Argument <-> Logic in unsurprising, too. Wikipedia articles usually define their subject in in the first sentence. Defining things works by saying what general category they belong to, then by differentiating them within that.
E.g.
A fish is any member of a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an American _multinational corporation_ which provides Internet-related products and services [...]
A table is a form of _furniture_ with a flat and satisfactory horizontal upper surface [...]
And so on. If you always walk up the abstraction chain because you're picking the first link (the general category), you'll end up at the root of the categorization tree, which is likely something along the lines of Argument, Logic, Fact etc.
Note however that the current state of wikipedia has a different root loop for me, Logic leads to Philosophy.
(1) or one of a very limited number of loops, I also saw Science <-> Knowledge.
E.g.
A fish is any member of a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic craniate animals that lack limbs with digits.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an American _multinational corporation_ which provides Internet-related products and services [...]
A table is a form of _furniture_ with a flat and satisfactory horizontal upper surface [...]
And so on. If you always walk up the abstraction chain because you're picking the first link (the general category), you'll end up at the root of the categorization tree, which is likely something along the lines of Argument, Logic, Fact etc.
Note however that the current state of wikipedia has a different root loop for me, Logic leads to Philosophy.
(1) or one of a very limited number of loops, I also saw Science <-> Knowledge.
Unless the articles are edited before you come back!
Another way of thinking about it: There are N nodes that loop back to themselves. When starting at a given node, what are the odds that you'll never hit one of these N nodes? Additionally, we know that many of the N nodes are very general ones, like "truth", under which many topics roll up.
Agreed. I'd love to know how many different cycles the wikipedia article graph contains. If most articles lead to 1 out of 20 possible cycles, it's much less interesting than if it's 1 out of 5,000,000.
I've been looking to do something like this with the Networkx library in Python, though on an internal company MediaWiki with a much smaller article base. Going to try to visualise much the same thing, the major loops and cliques in the graph.
This is the same reason systems with a finite number of states cannot be chaotic
Without more information, I don't think this is true. It is true if the transition function between states depends on a finite number of previous ones (WLOG if s_n is a function of only s_{n-1}), but I think that it isn't if the transition depends on an infinite number.
(Though, in this case, clearly there is no history, so what you say is true.)
Without more information, I don't think this is true. It is true if the transition function between states depends on a finite number of previous ones (WLOG if s_n is a function of only s_{n-1}), but I think that it isn't if the transition depends on an infinite number.
(Though, in this case, clearly there is no history, so what you say is true.)
If your model only depends on at most a maximum fixed length of history, you can always model your finite systems to only depend on the most recent state. (Just make a copy of the history part of that state.)
In the case of depending on up to an infinite history, I wouldn't call that system to have a finite number of states any longer.
In the case of depending on up to an infinite history, I wouldn't call that system to have a finite number of states any longer.
Unless an article is reached that has no link. [A dead-state in the stated finite-state machine]
After the first few runs, i'm kinda surprised it's not a fixed point at Philosophy.
Back in May of 2011, it was. http://ai.stanford.edu/~west1/attractor.html
Never thought about it as a finite state system, but that's a great way of looking at it.
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
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
ah so thats why the degree is called Doctor of Philosophy?! Thanks for the enlightenment! I've wondered quite a lot of times why I'm a Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science, and not Doctor of Computer Science.
I get that this is tongue-in-cheek, but philosophy as in "Doctor of Philosophy" doesn't refer to the field of philosophy per se, but to the more general concept of "love of knowledge."
Not sure why you are getting down votes, but checking over Wikipedia confirms your comment
In the context of academic degrees, the term "philosophy" does not refer solely to the field of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom". In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy. The doctorate of philosophy as it exists today originated as a doctorate in the liberal arts at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and was eventually adopted by United States universities, becoming common in large parts of the world in the 20th century.[1] In many countries, the doctorate of philosophy is still awarded only in the liberal arts, which is known as "philosophy" in continental Europe.
In the context of academic degrees, the term "philosophy" does not refer solely to the field of philosophy, but is used in a broader sense in accordance with its original Greek meaning, which is "love of wisdom". In most of Europe, all fields other than theology, law and medicine were traditionally known as philosophy. The doctorate of philosophy as it exists today originated as a doctorate in the liberal arts at the Humboldt University of Berlin, and was eventually adopted by United States universities, becoming common in large parts of the world in the 20th century.[1] In many countries, the doctorate of philosophy is still awarded only in the liberal arts, which is known as "philosophy" in continental Europe.
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Traditionally, a university had four faculties, the lower or artists faculty, and the three higher faculties of theology, law and medicine. Students would start in the artists faculty learning the seven liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy (including astrology)) to become a magister artium (M.A.) and then go to one of the higher faculties to get their doctorate (Th.D, LL.D or M.D., respectively). Philosophy and science (née natural philosophy) developed in the artists faculty and over time became important enough to grant the artists faculty the right to grant doctorates, too, with philosophy leading the way. That's why many science faculties, which split off of the artists faculty over the centuries still grant the title of a doctor of philosophy.
Ah, and the first three of the liberal arts that were the first thing a student learned, grammar, rhetoric and logic, were called the trivium, hence the modern word "trivial" for obvious things everyone should know.
Ah, and the first three of the liberal arts that were the first thing a student learned, grammar, rhetoric and logic, were called the trivium, hence the modern word "trivial" for obvious things everyone should know.
Very interesting, thanks. http://atilf.atilf.fr and Dictionnaire historique de la langue Française both see two meanings for the French "trivial": one is common as in commonplace, and the other is common as in gross and vulgar. The first comes from /trivialis/, as fhars says. The latter comes from /trivium/, the crossroads. I don't know if English also has the second meaning: vulgar.
Thank you. I enjoyed reading this. Would be nice if you wrote a little blog post on the subject :)
Really cool comment, I love finding interesting trivia in forums.
> 'interesting trivia'
In the above - grammar, rhetoric, logic - formed the "trivium" and - arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - formed the "quadrivium".
Also "trivium" represented the place where three roads would intersect. People would meet here and exchange pleasantries and gossip. That is how you get the current meaning of the word "trivia".
In the above - grammar, rhetoric, logic - formed the "trivium" and - arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy - formed the "quadrivium".
Also "trivium" represented the place where three roads would intersect. People would meet here and exchange pleasantries and gossip. That is how you get the current meaning of the word "trivia".
That's really cool. Thanks for sharing.
That seems like a very reasonable assumption. I just randomly sampled a dozen or so articles and they all followed that theme.
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 cathode ray? And then it's in television? How does broadcasting work? I'd sit on the floor with a half dozen open encyclopedias open around me, the same way we can do now with browser tabs.
Wikipedia has many flaws, but it's a fantastic tool and I'd have killed for it as a 12 year old with 5 volumes of an encyclopedia in my backpack!
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 cathode ray? And then it's in television? How does broadcasting work? I'd sit on the floor with a half dozen open encyclopedias open around me, the same way we can do now with browser tabs.
Wikipedia has many flaws, but it's a fantastic tool and I'd have killed for it as a 12 year old with 5 volumes of an encyclopedia in my backpack!
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.
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.
Sometimes, I go onto wikipedia just to find out one fact... and end up with 6 or 7 tabs open on the topic, ranging from genetics to Judaism.
As far as I know, this was noticed in May last year on the xkcd forums. http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=71309 There's a writeup of it with a gigantic picture over here: http://www.mrphlip.com/wikiphilosophy/
Seems like there is an even older link here on HN
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2584896
OK, and this game http://spu.co/get-to-philosophy was played at least as far back as August 2010.
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True, the "wikipedia loop" itself is not a new discovery. But still, congrats for coming up with a nice GUI to demonstrate it!
I have a site: http://TheWikiGame.com that makes a game out of a related idea (finding the connection between Wikipedia articles).
Recently, I've been giving access to the game data to people (like university researchers, etc) to test different theories on path connections made by real people, etc.
The game has now been running for over 3 years, has about 1.19 million players, playing over 1.37 million games, with about 1.22 million won games (successful start/end article connection).
Got a really cool application for all the game data? I'd love to hear: [email protected]
Recently, I've been giving access to the game data to people (like university researchers, etc) to test different theories on path connections made by real people, etc.
The game has now been running for over 3 years, has about 1.19 million players, playing over 1.37 million games, with about 1.22 million won games (successful start/end article connection).
Got a really cool application for all the game data? I'd love to hear: [email protected]
I have a kind of Wiki game that I play aloud with friends. Person A names a topic. Person B must guess whether Wikipedia owns the top Google (incognito/not signed-in) result for that term. Person B gets a point for guessing right, or Person A gets a point if Person B guesses wrong. The fun is in coming up with "stumpers.'
Maybe the interesting part is the 150,000 lost games.
Surely most of those are just abandoned games?
Nobody linked xkcd yet? Relevant Alt-Text: http://xkcd.com/903/
Wikipedia is aware of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Get_to_Philosophy
As they describe in the page, when you describe something, you are trying to place it within a general framework.
In trying to describe a domain in an encyclopedia, it does little good to use language specific to the domain. If your reader doesn't know what Biology is, it's little use trying to describe it in terms of Microbiology and Immunology. You have to use more general language.
There are are few words more general and meaningless in our language than "organization".
edit - grammar
In trying to describe a domain in an encyclopedia, it does little good to use language specific to the domain. If your reader doesn't know what Biology is, it's little use trying to describe it in terms of Microbiology and Immunology. You have to use more general language.
There are are few words more general and meaningless in our language than "organization".
edit - grammar
i know. when i found that out, i spent half the day on wikipedia trying it out with different pages. so i built a way to automate it :)
Seems like it would be nice to cache some of these requests, instead of repeatedly hammering the Wikipedia API. And why is it grabbing images?
http://i.imgur.com/KSju9.png
(Incidentally, my test case for the screenshot did not lead to Philosophy!)
http://i.imgur.com/KSju9.png
(Incidentally, my test case for the screenshot did not lead to Philosophy!)
totally agree. i hacked this together pretty quickly last night. definitely a lot of room for improvement. thanks for the feedback!
sorry to say, but couldn't you have thought about that before posting it on HN? you're on the front page, if your site really runs without caching, you must be wasting an enormous amount of WP's resources.
It looks like there is a bug where it doesn't fetch the correct page:
http://wikiloopr.com/anime
http://wikiloopr.com/anime
fixed
Either philosophy is a dead end, then, or it is the base of all knowledge. Depends on whether knowledge is a tree or a graph, which is... a philosophical question!
My brain exploded.
My brain exploded.
I seem to have broken it here: http://wikiloopr.com/List%20of%20minor%20planets:%2075001%E2...
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets:_75001%E2...
That is, however, a weird Wikipedia page. It seems like the first link is a target to another location on the page, which (I'd assume) would put it in an infinite loop.
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets:_75001%E2...
That is, however, a weird Wikipedia page. It seems like the first link is a target to another location on the page, which (I'd assume) would put it in an infinite loop.
"Egypt" also breaks.
It's funny, but it's true that everything in life ultimately leads back to philosophy.
As noted by XKCD, everything is based on something else: http://xkcd.com/435/
And I think after Maths on that should come Philosophy.
As noted by XKCD, everything is based on something else: http://xkcd.com/435/
And I think after Maths on that should come Philosophy.
"Nematode" and "Flow (psychology)" stop at "psychology" which I think is just another example of that discipline putting on airs.
That's changed now, thanks to me.
I agree. Thought that at the time. Was a philosophy student at the time too though.
Guys :) This is always fun when it crops up - especially the musing on how deeply rooted the topic of philosophy is.
But please don't go editing articles to improve the loops or otherwise change them. Unless of course the change is beneficial to the article.
It's like going for a walk somewhere fascinating; enjoy the view, but leave nothing behind :)
But please don't go editing articles to improve the loops or otherwise change them. Unless of course the change is beneficial to the article.
It's like going for a walk somewhere fascinating; enjoy the view, but leave nothing behind :)
What happens for Biology? http://wikiloopr.com/Biology. For me, it goes down until it gets to Biology, and then highlights Biology over and over.
Am I just missing something here?
Edit: This no longer happens. Now it properly loops on Philosophy and Proposition.
Biology
Natural science
Science
Knowledge
Fact
Proof (truth)
Argument
Philosophy
Problem
Doubt
Belief
Proposition
Logic
Reason
Human
Mammal
Class (biology)
Biological classification
Organism
Biology
Am I just missing something here?
Edit: This no longer happens. Now it properly loops on Philosophy and Proposition.
Here is a similar visualization of the phenomenon from last year http://xefer.com/wikipedia
This is a superior visualisation in my opinion - it actually builds you a tree of links as you enter subsequent searches. Quite interesting to see how article chains cluster into 3 or 4 different "main branches".
Except there's no autocomplete. I couldn't match Carly rae jepsen... but once you get it, it is much cooler.
Works for:
* Carly Rae Jepson
* Paul is dead
* Telephony
* Easter Island
* Drum and bass
* Sunglasses
* CAT 5
* Willy Wonka
* Black hole
* Vancouver
* Cloud Cuckoo Land
* Bacon
* Radish
* Brunette
* Dunning-Kruger Effect
* Lady Gaga
* Sailor Moon
If the chain hits Philosophy first, it converges on Philosophy/Argument. If it hits Fact first, it converges on Fact/Truth.
* Carly Rae Jepson
* Paul is dead
* Telephony
* Easter Island
* Drum and bass
* Sunglasses
* CAT 5
* Willy Wonka
* Black hole
* Vancouver
* Cloud Cuckoo Land
* Bacon
* Radish
* Brunette
* Dunning-Kruger Effect
* Lady Gaga
* Sailor Moon
If the chain hits Philosophy first, it converges on Philosophy/Argument. If it hits Fact first, it converges on Fact/Truth.
I can't replicate it, but I encountered a weird bug. I entered "Star Trek" and hit Enter. The suggested items list appeared and I clicked on "Star Trek". Page titles appeared as normal, but everything appeared twice, like so:
Star Trek
Star Trek
Cinema of the United States
Film
Cinema of the United States
Recording
Data
Level of measurement
Film
...etc until the last page title, "Reality"
I also got a weird one:
Anime
Animation
The page you specified doesn't existThat's funny because the first link on the Animation page is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion
Is that an Easter Egg (illusion == doesn't exist)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion
Is that an Easter Egg (illusion == doesn't exist)?
Same thing here, also from Animation.
I love wiki. I spend hours following links. Having loops is a feature or else I might never stop.
Greek City States ->
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 PhilosophyWhen images appear first in the page's source, the wrong link is chosen. I assume you are trying to go for the first link, as a human reader would see it.
For example, the page on Anime:
http://wikiloopr.com/Anime
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anime&action=e...
For example, the page on Anime:
http://wikiloopr.com/Anime
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anime&action=e...
thanks! gonna fix that later
http://wikiloopr.com/whale
"Whale" leads to the "pinniped"/"marine mammal" loop. How about that one?
"Whale" leads to the "pinniped"/"marine mammal" loop. How about that one?
In fact, according to a crawl of the Wikipedia database from May 2011, nearly 95% of Wikipedia articles will take you back to Philosophy.
- Always interested in the backstory of folks that sit around thinking this stuff up (and then testing it).
http://www.syndiosocial.com/the-philosophy-of-networks/
- Always interested in the backstory of folks that sit around thinking this stuff up (and then testing it).
http://www.syndiosocial.com/the-philosophy-of-networks/
I think this is fairly trivially explained in most cases by the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. Almost by construction, nearly every article starts with "X is a Y" (modulo grammatical niceties) where Y is a more general class to which X belongs. In cases when the article doesn't follow that form, the first linked term is usually still explanatory or definitional in some sense and hence more general, and cases where that doesn't apply (e.g. Obstacle) are unusual enough that they don't generally break the cycles. There are no "Wikipedia axioms" that I know of, so this is pretty much guaranteed to end in a cycle looping through a limited set of terms used to talk about abstract concepts. Hence Philosophy.
One of these, at least, is supported by a pretty weird edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reason&diff=51...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reason&diff=51...
Few days ago, when this was on MainPage, it ended in different loop than now.
Today most articles ends in cycle between Philosophy and Modern Philosophy.. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_philosophy )
few days ago, it was cycling between Philosophy and Agency ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy) )
What changed and why?
Today most articles ends in cycle between Philosophy and Modern Philosophy.. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_philosophy )
few days ago, it was cycling between Philosophy and Agency ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(philosophy) )
What changed and why?
Aha, someone changed the first link on page Problem from purpose to obstacle.
Its a little bit like butterfly effect :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Problem&action...
Its a little bit like butterfly effect :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Problem&action...
You have a bug. Pages like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. (note the dot at the end) have a "geographic coordinate system" link at the top, that isn't part of the article. So queries like http://wikiloopr.com/Steve%20Jobs are actually returning wrong results.
Yep, it's seeing the "Coordinates" link at the top right corner of the page.
thanks! I'll go ahead and fix it.
This is the shortest one I've found so far - http://wikiloopr.com/monty%20python
[deleted]
here's the shortest one i've found: http://wikiloopr.com/home
Oh, I think I found one that doesn't loop:
Port Arthur http://wikiloopr.com/Port%20Arthur
Either that, I found a bug.
Port Arthur http://wikiloopr.com/Port%20Arthur
Either that, I found a bug.
Not as dramatic but http://wikiloopr.com/Nelson ends up with Great Britain (and then claims it loops to itself with no intermediaries).
Looks like a bug. Dalian should lead to Liaoning.
Does this hold true with following the xth link on the page? I'd predict it does, but the further x is from 1, the longer the average chain before you get to the loop (by virtue of definitions being at the top of wiki articles, then at some point the average length would hit a consistent level). Would love to see this modified to let you determine x.
I quite like the loop between Doubt and Belief http://wikiloopr.com/Doubt
The loop found for "Psychology" is pretty neat: http://wikiloopr.com/Psychology
Edit: Looks like somebody is editing certain articles that don't have philosophy as the first link to have it. Psychology used to loop with itself through like 5 intermediates.
Edit: Looks like somebody is editing certain articles that don't have philosophy as the first link to have it. Psychology used to loop with itself through like 5 intermediates.
After having twenty tries that got me into the philosophy loop, I started to think what are the most basic concepts that philosophy is "made of". Maybe I could escape the loop that way?
And lo and behold, I tried word "word" and it loops between "emotion" and "psychology". http://wikiloopr.com/word
And lo and behold, I tried word "word" and it loops between "emotion" and "psychology". http://wikiloopr.com/word
I fixed that.
So did you edit Wikipedia to ensure the Philosophy loop?
Yes.
Now it loops between "Human" and "Reason". I think there are two secret cabals at work. One to break the Philosophy link and one to thwart these evil schemes.
This reminds me of a game I used to play as an intern with other interns to kill time. Someone would pick a Wikipedia article deep down in the bowels of Wikipedia and we would race to the article from Wikipedia only using links. We could get the article surprisingly fast, most within only 5 intermediate page visits from the homepage.
This behaves erratically. Sometimes it considers the coordinates link, above the entire article the "first link" (in the "Michael Phelps" chain), sometimes not (Chicago). Consequentially, I believe "Michael Phelps", when the coordinate link is ignored, leads to it's own loop that is not the philosophy loop in question.
Nice demo, but I think it is an incorrect asumption that the first link is to a broader subject. For example, for Perú it says: "It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil" So Perú->Ecuador left me with a big wtf..
http://wikiloopr.com/Peru
http://wikiloopr.com/Peru
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about an hour after posting this, someone changed the philosophy page so the philosophy-reality loop doesn't happen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
it still brings you to a loop, but it's not an immediate back-and-forth between the last two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy
it still brings you to a loop, but it's not an immediate back-and-forth between the last two.
I don't think the loop is the interesting part, what's interesting is that articles lead to philosophy.
Funny... As I was playing with this, somebody changed the order of:
"In philosophy and sociology..."
On the Agency (philosophy) page. This changed the output of the results, but in the end the loop still existed. However, I couldn't help but feel like someone is trying to hack the matrix.
"In philosophy and sociology..."
On the Agency (philosophy) page. This changed the output of the results, but in the end the loop still existed. However, I couldn't help but feel like someone is trying to hack the matrix.
Someone just changed the Reason page [1] which is now putting the focus on Biology instead of Philosophy.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reason&oldid=5...
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reason&oldid=5...
Puts me in mind of Translation Party[1] (which is back up, kudos to WillC and Rick!). There's a lot to be entertained via this sort of vertex-following algorithm.
[1] http://translationparty.com/
[1] http://translationparty.com/
Here's one that - if executed on the Federation computer on board the Starship Enterprise - would make smoke and sparks fly from the terminal...
http://wikiloopr.com/Reince%20Priebus
http://wikiloopr.com/Reince%20Priebus
I played with this [1] when I first started programming in Ruby. The results were super interesting (but now I regret not using the Wikipedia API...)
[1] https://gist.github.com/1654064
[1] https://gist.github.com/1654064
Strangely, http://wikiloopr.com/Tacos takes you to a different loop than http://wikiloopr.com/Burritos
clearly burritos are the more logical thing to eat
Interestingly, Paul Graham [1] leads to the photographer, but still leads back to the Web before heading to philosophy/proposition.
[1] http://wikiloopr.com/Paul%20Graham
[1] http://wikiloopr.com/Paul%20Graham
Keith Chegwin gets stuck in Great Britain, which is probably for the best.
I remember someone on reddit posting a python script that does the same thing (following the wiki chain to Philosophy).
Amusingly, my test got stuck in a loop between Science and Natural Science. :)
Amusingly, my test got stuck in a loop between Science and Natural Science. :)
All roads lead to Mathematics answers it -- http://www.xamuel.com/all-roads-lead-to-mathematics/
You could optimize this a bit by caching the loops, I noticed some pauses between Fact and Truth, seeing as how that loop always comes up it would be nice to cache it.
And if you go to the last link in any regular paragraph (not footnotes nor tables, nor references) you may often end up bouncing around sports teams.
http://wikiloopr.com/Gate%20City%20Bank
I think this one is bugged haha
Looks like http://wikiloopr.com/Crystal breaks it (The loop has no other end)
Right now it appears to be looping between Natural Science and Physics. But they're really far apart so you might not seem them on your screen at once.
The first word I tried — jeans — and it failed to make philosophy loop :) Apparently, any articles from generated list will fail too.
Jeans made the philosophy loop for me?
http://i.imgur.com/rgMkh.png
http://i.imgur.com/rgMkh.png
Somehow there was Emotion/Psychology loop there. Now it goes even further, than yours image, the loop is Argument/Philosophy now. Clearly, wikipedia is changing or tool was enhanced :)
http://wikiloopr.com/texting Yay! FInally found one that doesn't work.
That loops between philosophy and preposition.
For me it loops between Human and Reason.
It's been modified since then. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Text_messaging...
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Bangkok is 25 and Chopsticks loops with itself.
Interestingly, things like "Hat", "Shoe", and "Human" end up in a Psychology/Emotion loop, rather than the Philosophy loop.
I think I beat it...
http://wikiloopr.com/Caterham%20CSR
http://wikiloopr.com/Sigur%20Rós did I break it?
I wonder if this says more about the people who write the articles or the nature of the subjects themselves?
'television' was the first search term I could find that broke the loop - on the fifth or sixth attempt
WikiRaces! https://twitter.com/wikiraces
Try this http://wikiloopr.com/kumbanad
"HTML5 Canvas" gets into a loop on Truth ... Fact ... Truth. Not the usual philosophy loop.
Interesting find: "Sherlock Holmes" avoids the Argument/Philosophy loop; "Poirot" does not.
yesterday, the loop was always the same. since this made it to the top of hacker news, the loop has been changing. look at the revision history of some of those pages and you'll see that people on wikipedia are messing with the loop.
We used to play this as a game back in high school. First one to find the loop won.
Same but at the boring callcenter job I had at the time. Dell Enterprise support, we would get virtually no calls sometimes and we would make up shit to find on wikipedia and whoever found it from a specified starting point in the least amount of jumps won.
i started with "The Tyger" and got this:
m3mnoch.
The Tyger
William Blake
Romanticism
Industrial Revolution
United Kingdom
Britain (placename)
Great Britain
m3mnoch.
I got stuck in a philosophy-argument loop instead of philosophy-reality ;)
I thought Wikipedia hates sites like this. The do more harm than good.
First two I tried led to different loops:
1. Elephant (Mammal ... Human)
2. Big Bang (Fact ... Truth)
1. Elephant (Mammal ... Human)
2. Big Bang (Fact ... Truth)
I think this works for any link, not just the first link.
"Greg James" As in Radio one DJ.....Doesnt work!
Are there any major articles that don't loop?
maybe not major, but the ones i've found so far that don't do it are
http://wikiloopr.com/home http://wikiloopr.com/chopsticks http://wikiloopr.com/monty%20python
http://wikiloopr.com/home http://wikiloopr.com/chopsticks http://wikiloopr.com/monty%20python
also, anything that leads to marriage
http://wikiloopr.com/dating
Shakespeare - 28 links. My personal best.
MAF [1] - 30. Though, it's a bit of a cheat since the first page is surely disambiguation.
I also found M62 Locomotive [2] at 26 to be interesting.
1: http://wikiloopr.com/MAF
2: http://wikiloopr.com/M62%20locomotive
I also found M62 Locomotive [2] at 26 to be interesting.
1: http://wikiloopr.com/MAF
2: http://wikiloopr.com/M62%20locomotive
Gorgonzola achieved 43 - http://wikiloopr.com/Gorgonzola
How does that get there slower than "fart" ??
In another time it would lead to "God"
"booger" doesn't do it. Just sayin.
ironically, starting at "strange loop" avoids the repetitive philosophical argument
That works because somebody is being funny, and created a self referential strange loop inside Wikipedia.
That's a good find you found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loops
That's a good find you found. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loops
Hofstadter was a genius, one of his books was called "I am a Strange Loop" and xkcd (jokingly) reported that his autobiography reads:
I'm
so
meta
even
this
acronymHere it is: http://xkcd.com/917/
I have to admit guilt here :-) Nice that someone found it too. +1 for GEB.
TIL Wikipedia has a JSON API!
"Honda" only goes 3 links
http://wikiloopr.com/home
Home - Residence - Home
i guess i could modify it to not include bold links. notice why it's stopping there...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_company
As does London, but it's a proper loop.
"Lies" doesn't work.
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Wikipedia is a dense oriented graph, no wonder it has many cycles. What's the big deal?
Pseudodiarrhea gave me a unique loop.
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 finite number of Wikipedia articles, therefore you must eventually reach an article you've seen before. (This is the same reason systems with a finite number of states cannot be chaotic.)
Since it's necessarily true that all articles will eventually reach a loop when you iteratively click the first link, we have to ask: how unusual is it that they usually reach the SAME loop?