Who doesn't know the Wikipedia races? Using links to travel from one Wikipedia page to another to reach a destination page before the other participants. But there is an interesting phenomenon about them.

"Clicking on the first lowercase link in the main text of a Wikipedia article, and then repeating the process for subsequent articles, usually eventually gets one to the Philosophy article".


According to the Wikipedia page 'Wikipedia: Getting to Philosophy', more than 94% of all articles will eventually lead to the English article "Philosophy" with an average chain length of 23 clicks. A theory that could explain this phenomenon would be that the first link of a page tends to take the reader to a broader and more abstract topic, which will after a number of rounds lead to Philosophy. When this page is reached, continuation of the process takes the reader into a loop of philosophy - reality - actually exist - ontology - philosophical and back to Philosophy.


What it's interesting about this, is that Wikipedia could be seen as a system composed by many different authors, and different bits and pieces without a very specific source. The entire Wikipedia world could be seen as having some kind of autonomy, yet still the theory of Philosophy being the mother of all sciences applies.


Image generated via Xefer

Enjoying this story? Show it to us!

0 Likes

Share your thoughts and join the technology debate!

Be the first to comment

More like this