I Spent 4 Months Investigating Wikipedia's Secret Rabbit Hole. Here’s What I Found.

Summary

The video investigates how repeatedly following the first link in Wikipedia articles produces networks of connected concepts—and whether those networks differ across languages in ways that may reflect culture.

Method and findings

Starting from many Wikipedia articles, the investigator repeatedly followed the first link in each article’s main text, skipping bracketed material such as pronunciations. These paths eventually entered closed loops called core cycles. In English Wikipedia, philosophy appears in the core cycle reached by a reported 97% of paths.

Because core cycles can change over time, the investigation also examined highly central pages—articles that connect large portions of the network. The video reports that, as of July 8, 2026, about 90% of English Wikipedia articles flowed into a core cycle involving philosophy, essence, and existence. A smaller cluster, around 2% of pages, led toward mathematics and number theory.

The networks differed across language editions. The video describes prominent government-related concepts in Russian Wikipedia, geography in some editions, and international organizations and human rights in French Wikipedia. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean editions shared a prominent cycle involving the Sun, the solar system, and Earth.

Concepts discussed

• Cultural relativism: The idea that how people interpret behavior and ideas depends partly on the cultural context in which they grew up.
• Linguistic relativity (the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis): The debated idea that language influences, and may constrain, how people think. The video cites research suggesting that Russian speakers distinguish two shades of blue more quickly because Russian has separate words for them.
• Categorical thinking: People group varied things under shared labels, such as different kinds of trees. The video argues that language helps simplify a complex world, though categories can be imperfect.
• Plato’s diairesis: A method of defining something by repeatedly dividing a broad category into narrower ones. The video compares this with Wikipedia’s link structure, which can be understood as moving through categories in reverse.
• Analytical and holistic approaches: The video characterizes some European and related traditions as emphasizing abstract categories and breaking things into parts, while describing some East Asian traditions as placing more emphasis on context and the whole. It presents these as broad tendencies, not definitive cultural rules.
• Limits of interpretation: Wikipedia’s link networks may reflect cultural priorities, but they are not a straightforward mirror of a culture. Language structure, editorial choices, and other factors are entangled, so the patterns do not establish cultural causes on their own.
• Broader implication: Different languages can lead readers from the same starting topic through coherent chains of links to different conclusions. The video suggests that disagreements can arise from differing values and perspectives, not simply from differences in intelligence or reasoning.

Researchers and sources featured

• Maxim Gabella — Theoretical physicist whose paper examined whether Wikipedia’s first-link networks reflect cultural differences. His surname is rendered inconsistently in the subtitles.
• Plato — Source of the diairesis method of dividing categories.
• Wikipedia — The encyclopedia and network of language editions analyzed.
• Unnamed studies on color perception — Cited in connection with Russian speakers’ ability to distinguish shades of blue.
• Unnamed interviewees — Experts discussing language, culture, Wikipedia editing, and differing philosophical traditions; the subtitles do not identify them.