Today’s XKCD comic had the following ALT text:
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 felt compelled to put this to the test with a single example. Would “Toothpick” lead me to Philosophy? If so, how many clicks would it take? Here is the result:
- Toothpick
- Wood
- Plants
- Life
- Physical body
- Physics
- Natural science
- Science
- Knowledge
- Fact
- Latin
- Italic languages
- Indo-European languages
- Language family
- Language
- Communication
- Meaning (philosophy of language)
- Aristotle
- Greek philosopher
- Greeks
- Nation
- Sovereign State
- State (polity)
- Social sciences
- Umbrella Term
- Subset
- Mathematics
- Quantity
- Property (philosophy)
- Modern Philosophy
- Philosophy
That’s a pretty circuitous route, but sure enough, Wikipedia connected Toothpick to Philosophy just as XKCD said it would.