Tell HN: I don't think humans add much to the universe

They are better at increasing entropy faster than a pile of regolith does.

why do we have to "add" anything? isn't it enough to just exist?

As Carl Sagan famously said, 'the cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.'

That's like saying a drop of water doesn't add much to the ocean.

The idea that a bunch of primates on a single rock, orbiting a very ordinary star at the edge of a typical galaxy would have the capacity to "understand the universe"... whatever that mean... is pretty comical to me. So many people read Douglas Adams' works and yet they seem to have missed a big point.

We don't know the answer, because we don't even know the question. Even if it we did it's pure human arrogance to imagine that the questions and answers relating to a potentially infinite existence is something we could hope to address.

It isn't our job to add something to the universe, just like the universe we simply exist and then we won't. That is all.

It does not have to add much to the universe. Even the things which does not add much to the universe is still something.

I thought matter/energy couldn't be created or destroyed?

So, nothing adds anything to the universe.

according to who? Taking nihilism point of view: we are nothing but.a ephemeral spec of dust in cosmo epoch. to me/subjectively I matter a heck whole lot to myself :-)

> We don't even understand the universe.

Exactly... Only when we (better ?) understand the universe will we know if (and how) we (meaningfully) add much to it.

We add humans. Not much but it's something.