no, the OP says it in a different sense, namely that even if you are duly impressed by these advancements, they will stop in a few years and a new line of research will be needed
They seem to be uncorrelated with real-world physics. Whether they are "new" is anybody's guess. They're variables identified in a virtual environment, rather than the real world so there's very little chance they correspond to something in the real world, let alone physics, much less "new physics".
This quote came to mind when seeing the title but I could not remember the source (read it in high-school, I think before learning formally about derivatives). I'm glad someone found it.
Draw your own conclusions. From any source, that's what you'll have to do in the end. In this sample, it happens I've skimmed the lesswrong thread's recommended book and thought it looked much more interesting than the text I learned from years before (Boyce & diPrima). The reddit thread seems pretty barren in glancing through the results summary.