I just spent some time playing with Google’s autocomplete function. And it was fun. I started by using Randal Olson’s form on cities rather than countries: “Why is [city] so…?” (“Croatia the Beautiful,” January 28, 2014). For instance, Venice turned out to be “famous,” “popular,” “expensive,” and “romantic,” in that order. But I began improvising soon enough. Thus I lit upon a question of quite some interest to me lately: “Why are humans so…?” The first word Google came up with was “smart,” which was a huge disappointment for me. The browser offered three much more promising alternatives, though. The first was “evil,” the second “stupid,” and the third “weak.” The second alternative is right up my alley, it goes without saying, but the other two are quite promising, as well. And this is what humans think of themselves. That is, these are the stereotypes of our time as captured by zillions of searches using the browser on the World Wide Web. To wit, my own view of the human species is shared by millions upon millions of humans. And they cannot all be wrong, can they?!

Addendum (January 3, 2023)

Almost exactly nine years later, I unexpectedly remembered Google’s autocomplete function. And I immediately went for my laptop and googled the old question: “Why are humans so…?” I got the following answers in a jiffy, and in this particular order: “weak,” “smart,” “violent,” “different from other animals,” “slow,” “selfish,” “destructive,” and “weak compared to animals.” I was really delighted by most of the answers. Now, is there a simpler way of learning what English-speaking humans think about their own species? Given the browser’s predominance on the World Wide Web, chances are that there is no better answer. And English is the lingua franca of this day and age, which means that the question and answers go way beyond countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malta, Jamaica, Guyana, Barbados, and so on. In short, humans are hardly impressed with themselves nowadays. Besides, they seem to be more impressed with animals. Congratulations all around! Sooner or later, humans may well get things right.