# Click on the First Link!

Here's something you'll find incredibly interesting if you don't already know about it.

Take any article on Wikipedia. Any article.

$$1)$$ Click on the first link on that article text not in parentheses [brackets] and/or italics.

$$2)$$ Repeat step $$1$$

You'll eventually end up in Philosophy.

This is however not full-proof. As of May 26, 2011, this happens with 94.52% of all articles on Wikipedia. The rest of them either link to pages with no other links or lead to pages that do not exist. Some of them get stuck in loops.

As an example, I started with 'Asian Cuisine' and eventually got to Philosophy.

$$\text{Asian Cuisine} \rightarrow \text{History of China} \rightarrow\text{Yellow River}$$$$\rightarrow \text{River} \rightarrow\text{Watercourse} \rightarrow\text{Water} \rightarrow\text{Chemical Compound}$$$$\rightarrow \text{Chemical substance}\rightarrow \text{Chemistry} \rightarrow\text{Outline of Physical Science}$$$$\rightarrow\text{Physics} \rightarrow\text{Natural Science} \rightarrow\text{Science} \rightarrow\text{Knowledge} \rightarrow\text{Fact}$$$$\rightarrow\text{Proof} \rightarrow\text{Necessity and Sufficiency} \rightarrow\text{Logic}\rightarrow \text{Reason}\rightarrow$$$$\text{Consciousness} \rightarrow\text{Quality} \rightarrow\text{Philosophy}$$

I came to know of this awesome fact from xkcd.

And the picture is taken from Wikipedia itself!

Note by Mursalin Habib
3 years, 10 months ago

MarkdownAppears as
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[example link](https://brilliant.org)example link
> This is a quote
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    # I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
# I indented these lines
# 4 spaces, and now they show
# up as a code block.

print "hello world"
MathAppears as
Remember to wrap math in $$...$$ or $...$ to ensure proper formatting.
2 \times 3 $$2 \times 3$$
2^{34} $$2^{34}$$
a_{i-1} $$a_{i-1}$$
\frac{2}{3} $$\frac{2}{3}$$
\sqrt{2} $$\sqrt{2}$$
\sum_{i=1}^3 $$\sum_{i=1}^3$$
\sin \theta $$\sin \theta$$
\boxed{123} $$\boxed{123}$$

Sort by:

Compare with the Collatz Conjecture :)

- 3 years, 10 months ago

MIND = BLOWN

- 3 years, 10 months ago

That is awesome.

- 3 years, 10 months ago

What happens when you continue after Philosophy ?

- 3 years, 10 months ago

You probably just wind up back at Philosophy.

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Finn is right. I checked.

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Awesome!

- 3 years, 3 months ago

this is awesome mind blowing

- 2 years, 7 months ago

Really an amazing truth

- 3 years, 3 months ago

I opened an article on Wikipedia about Wikipedia(LOL) and started: $\text{Wikipedia}\rightarrow \text{Gratis}\rightarrow\text{Remuneration}\rightarrow\text{Compensation(Wikitionary)}\rightarrow\text{Old French}\\ \rightarrow\text{Gallo-Romance Languages}\rightarrow\text{Romance Languages}\rightarrow\text{Vulgar Latin}\rightarrow\text{Sociolinguistics}\\ \rightarrow\text{Society}\rightarrow\text{Human}\rightarrow\text{Hominini}\rightarrow\text{Tribe(Biology)}\\ \rightarrow\text{Biology}\rightarrow\text{Natural Science}\rightarrow\text{Science}\rightarrow\text{Knowledge}\\ \rightarrow\text{Awareness}\rightarrow\text{Consciousness}\rightarrow\text{Quality(Philosophy)}\rightarrow\boxed{\text{Philosophy}}$

- 3 years, 3 months ago

Is there any reason behind this?

- 3 years, 10 months ago

sprb!!!!!! (Y)

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Reached Philosophy from Fifa Football World Cup

- 3 years, 10 months ago

reached from prime

- 3 years, 7 months ago

till ''logic'' , its different for many, Logic comes up for all that i tried and from there its same..

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Nice!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

e(mathematical constant) to Philosophy..........And the last few steps( starting from Science ) were exactly the same as Mursalin's!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

What strikes me about this is the fact that one could try this thing with any link of Wikipedia, not just the first one, and as the next page is an article in itself, there always remains a statistical probability of ending up in 'Philosophy' if one is willing to carry on indefinitely. However, the chance is incredibly small and it would take a hell lot of time to reach the destination.

- 3 years, 10 months ago

What are you trying to say can be formalized by using a simple probabilistic machinary called Markov Chain. In fact it is a very special Markov Chain called random walks over graphs (whose nodes are the set of all wiki pages and there is an edge between node a to node b if the page a contains a hyperlink to page b). Given sufficient "niceness" property on the underlying graph, you can even derive expected time to revisit a certain page etc and surprisingly this quantity is dictated by another graphical property called "equivalent resistance" of the graph (mathematically the same thing that you study in electrical networks).

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Srsly! From Natural Science even mine is the SAME as yours! I started with D-day naval deceptions :D

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Seriously awesome man....!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Comment deleted Jun 06, 2014

http://xefer.com/wikipedia

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Can you make me understand .What is it?I tried Hard but failed...thank you

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Read the main post. It says that any wikipedia article is indirectly or directly linked to Philosophy

- 3 years, 10 months ago

But what about the link.I typed Something there & it formed like a diagram

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Hmm, it is the chain of articles or rather the path you've to follow from a given article to Philosophy

- 3 years, 10 months ago

Thanks...

- 3 years, 10 months ago

press the random button @Archiet Dev!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

This is awesome!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

What is the comment that you've deleted? Tell me about it

- 3 years, 10 months ago

It was someone else's comment. He wanted the python code which is being run in the gif that the OP provided

- 3 years, 10 months ago

O!

- 3 years, 10 months ago

- 3 years, 10 months ago

from Richard Rusczyk to Philisophy

- 3 years, 10 months ago