There Must Be Some Kind Of Cosmic Truth In This

[JWBear]

Wikipedia trivia: 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 tried this starting with six different random Wikipedia pages and eventually ended up at "Philosphy". It really does work!

[Moonliner]

I started with "Philosphy".

It doesn't work.

[Alex]

Why ignore a rhetorical:

Philosophy --> Reason --> Sense --> Physiology --> Organ (anatomy) --> Biology --> Natural Science --> Science --> Knowledge --> Fact --> Information --> Finite set --> Mathematics --> Quantity --> Property (philosophy) --> Modern Philosphy --> Philosophy

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Alex

Why ignore a rhetorical:

Philosophy --> Reason --> Sense --> Physiology --> Organ (anatomy) --> Biology --> Natural Science --> Science --> Knowledge --> Fact --> Information --> Finite set --> Mathematics --> Quantity --> Property (philosophy) --> Modern Philosphy --> Philosophy

Huh. I get:

Philosophy --> rational argument --> rationality --> reason --> rationality

Which makes a loop between reason and rationality.

Ps: JW - Did you get this from XKCD or somewhere else?

[JWBear]

Originally Posted by Moonliner

Ps: JW - Did you get this from XKCD or somewhere else?

I saw it on xkcd and tried it out as a lark. I was suprised that it actually worked.

[JWBear]

Random Page: Union General Hospital --> Hospital --> Health Care --> Disease --> Abnormal --> Abnormal Psychology --> Psychology --> Science --> Knowledge --> Facts --> Information --> Sequence --> Mathmatics --> Quantity --> Property --> Modern Philosophy --> Philosophy

[Alex]

So far the few I've tried have all gone through Science first on its way to Philosophy.

Which makes sense since Science is better.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Seems like a good final project for an undergrad recursive algorithms class. Starting at [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Contents/A%E2%80%93Z_index] this page, write a program to determine if there are any entries that do not lead to Philosophy. Give the optimal order of time complexity in Big-O notation.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Hmm, Alex's path follows the letter of the law ["click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics"]. Moonliner's probably follow more the intent since, in that case, the parentheses are not of the technical sort that contain nothing but pronunciation, word origin, etc. that head many articles, but rather it's presented as part of the explanatory text that just happens to be parenthetical. Although, in that it just provides a synonym, it is very closely related to the kind of parenthetical the "not in parentheses" clause was meant to rule out.

Definite gray area.

[Moonliner]

Originally Posted by Ghoulish Delight

Hmm, Alex's path follows the letter of the law ["click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics"]. Moonliner's probably follow more the intent since, in that case, the parentheses are not of the technical sort that contain nothing but pronunciation, word origin, etc. that head many articles, but rather it's presented as part of the explanatory text that just happens to be parenthetical. Although, in that it just provides a synonym, it is very closely related to the kind of parenthetical the "not in parentheses" clause was meant to rule out.

Definite gray area.

How does Alex get to Reason? Are you all seeing something different from what I see?