User:Interchangeable/The Philosophy Myth

It's a common myth that if you follow the first link from every article on Wikipedia (ignoring things such as disambiguation templates, pronunciation guides, the rare article that links to itself first, and Wikilinks to a section of the page other than the lead), you will eventually arrive on the Philosophy page. I'm here to tell you that that's wrong, but there is a certain page that you will eventually reach. Or, more accurately, you will almost always reach one page of the following loop (following the first link in each article):


 * Human → Taxonomy → Ancient Greek → Greek language → Indo-European languages → Language family → Language → Human

Don't believe me? Let's try it. I clicked Random Article and arrived at this page. Here's the path that I took, following the first link of each article.


 * Big Ben Bolt → John Cullen Murphy → Prince Valiant → Comic strip → Newspaper → Publication → Content (media) → Information → Order theory → Mathematics → Greek language

And we're in the infinite loop. Let's try another random page: the default font on Wikipedia, Arial.


 * Arial → Sans-serif → Typography → Greek language

That was fast! Let's try another page from good old Random Article.


 * Martin O'Doherty → Galway → Irish language → Goidelic languages → Irish language

And suddenly, we have a two-page infinite loop! I edited the article so the link to Scottish Gaelic came first. Here's what followed after that:


 * Scottish Gaelic → Celtic languages → Names of the Celts → Classical antiquity → History → Greek language

And what of the Philosophy page itself? Let's see where it leads.

Philosophy → Reason → Art → Symbol → Numeral system → Writing system → Symbolic system → Psychology → Science → Latin → Italic languages → Indo-European languages

Ha!

More examples (feel free to add one yourself if you wish, but please format them in the style of the others):


 * Brenda Benet → United States → Americas (terminology) → Americas → Spanish language → Romance languages → Indo-European languages
 * TBCB → Protein → Chemical compound → Chemical substance → Chemistry → Science → Latin → Italic languages → Indo-European languages
 * There's Nothin → Sean Kingston → Sean Kingston (album) → Eponym → Toponymy → Greek language
 * Structure → Pattern recognition → Machine learning → Artificial intelligence → Intelligence → Abstraction → Hierarchy → Ordinary → Western Christianity → Latin Church → Particular Church → Canon law (Catholic Church) → Canon law → Ecclesiastical jurisdiction → Jurisdiction → Latin → Italic  languages → Indo-European languages (that was a long one!)

So why is this? Maybe it's because of all the pronunciation keys, or that a simple topic is likely to be linked to a more general one at first. Whatever the reason, it's a bit weird. Inter change  able | talk to me