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Comment by gremlinsinc | Hacker News Reader

This sounds more like an AskReddit post than AskHN... but I'd say printable organs, smaller and smaller computer chips, commercialization of space flight, possible warp drive tech(may get us there in 100+ years, lol not expecting anything soon).. anti-aging (expected to double or triple life expectancy by 2050.) etc...

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Those are mostly inventions, as opposed to discoveries.

I'd consider most of the things you listed to be inventions/innovations. Discovery, for me, is closely connected to uncovering of a new phenomena or an effect. And invention/innovation would be the use of it for some specific purpose.

Surely the techniques and logic used to empower such inventions and innovation had to be discovered by someone at some point. For every great new invention is their not usually some discovery made sometime prior which ushered it in? For things like smaller and smaller computer chips. I'd say that Moore's Law was discovered, not invented.

Moore's Law really is neither as it's more of an observation (and, arguably, a self-fulfilling prediction). Many inventions (made possible by various discoveries in semiconductor physics and the like) have enabled Moore's Law to more or less continue. But Moore's Law itself is not any sort of natural law.

The warp drive is definitely a brand new effect.

> AskReddit post than AskHN

What's the difference, apart from the quality of answers?

If BuzzFeed could rip off the top few answers and combine them into one article "The 8 greatest discoveries of the past few years!", then it's probably not a great HN post.

You mean, worse answers here, right.

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