Christine Peterson

Cofounder and Senior Fellow at Foresight Institute @foresightinst, with an interest in longevity and life extension. Coauthor of Gaming the Future (2022).

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

@SabinehazanMD Hear hear! Fit this @MIT I'm ashamed to be an alum until this is fixed. Alums: Stop donating until this is fixed!

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

SHAME ON @MIT and I'm ashamed to be an alum until this gets fixed. This situation hurts all women and all men. Fix it now, MIT!

[sabine hazan md @SabinehazanMD]

As a woman in science, the ripple effect of cases like this sets us backwards.
It’s already hard enough to be heard. When a jury awards $6M for defamation and tortious interference after years of career destruction, the rational response from men is quiet avoidance: fewer mentorships, fewer close collaborations, fewer opportunities extended to women.
That chill shrinks the network and visibility women still need.
SHAME ON @MIT. They treated the allegations as career-ending for @DMSabatini before a jury ever examined them — yet Knouse remains on faculty after the verdict found she defamed him and interfered with his work. Thank you @SciGuardians for exposing the truth.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

@ssp2s @MIT no doubt you are right. But if enough alums speak up, and stop donating, it might get fixed

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Fix this @MIT currently I'm ashamed to be an alum

[Daniella Romeo @Daniellavromeo]

One of the most disgraceful elements of the MIT/Whitehead scandal is their ongoing decision to defend Kristin Knouse and allow her to maintain employment at the institution. First, we now have concrete evidence of the wrongful lawsuit filed against MIT scientist David Sabatini, which was staged by Kristin Knouse and confidently backed by MIT/ Whitehead.

Second, we are witnessing a longstanding, reputable institution unable to admit they were wrong and unwilling to reverse the decision to disbar one of their best scientists. They've decided sparing their reputation is more important than acknowledging they helped destroy the life of an innocent man.

Third, Kristin Knouse wielded the institutional power of being female (in a male dominated field) during the height of #MeToo, so that she could seek ultimate revenge on a past partner (David) who moved on from her. Her messages demonstrate a sense of unbridled entitlement, and expose the lengths she's willing to go to in order to “balance the scales." This is someone with reckless disregard for the ethical code expected at her level of academia.

These bullet points alone produce suspicions over the competence and credibility of MIT/Whitehead. Lastly, it begets the dreaded question: how do institutions prevent this from happening in the future, if they don't admit to it happening now?

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Boggling if true. Who would think such a thing could happen in England? Has the world gone insane?

[MAGA Nation 47 @MAGANation_47]

British police told a woman walking her dog to leave the street because she was offending Muslims, since dogs are considered "haram".

Islamists already seem to be the owners of the United Kingdom.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

update on a recent result in longevity

[Maria Marinova, PhD @m__marinova]

"Aging in bursts at 44 and 60" made the rounds but plot twist - some of these aging waves might have come from the stats, not biology. Credit to Shen and Snyder for co-authoring the stress test of their own result. The new preprint, with two of the original authors on it, shows statistical power alone can draw the 44 and 60 bursts.
https://t.co/lsfTxspz6K

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

@StanSastry @MIT Don't understand "his backers are ethnic"?

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

hear hear fix this @MIT I'm ashamed to be an alum

[The College Fix @CollegeFix]

It's time to repair the damage done, to both this man's life and his promising cancer research.

https://t.co/6IGQBFGrSz

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Such weird stuff going on in UK

[mary poppins @ozgal1965]

Regardless of personal opinions about Russell Brand, on the exact same day he received a prison sentence of ten years and six months, an Afghan national appeared in court for three counts of rape and penetration of a child under 13, but received a two-year suspended sentence.

🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Grandpas and uncles are not allowed to help out apparently

[More Births @MoreBirths]

Why the Newborn Stage is So Hard for Parents
For the first two months, there is no night and day, just rapid cycling between waking and sleeping, 24/7.

Parents, and mothers especially, benefit from strong support to get through the first months. Parents, grandmas and aunts can tag-team to take the baby for part of each day so that mothers can some uninterrupted sleep. Without support, sleep deprivation is certain and post-partum depression is likely. With support, those months manageable and parenthood is a wonderful experience.

By the third month, the baby is mostly sleeping through the night and things get much, much easier.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

From the team of @bettslacroix at @RetroBio_

[Smart Science @SmartScience]

Cells from donors over 50 began switching on stem cell genes in a week, and the stem cells they produced passed standard checks for health and genetic stability.

Scientists spent nearly 20 years trying to improve the proteins that reset cells. An AI just did it.

OpenAI teamed up with longevity startup Retro Biosciences to build GPT-4b micro, an AI model trained on protein sequences and biology data.

They asked it to redesign two of the Yamanaka factors, the famous proteins that earned a Nobel Prize in 2012 because they can reset an adult cell into a stem cell. The AI's versions, called RetroSOX and RetroKLF, differed from the originals by more than 100 building blocks on average, yet in lab tests they triggered more than 50 times stronger signs of reprogramming.

Turning adult cells into stem cells is notoriously slow and inefficient, often working in fewer than 1 in 1,000 cells, which holds back efforts to grow replacement tissues and to study how aging cells might be rejuvenated.

The redesigned proteins also seemed to help cells repair DNA damage better, a hint that they may do more than just speed things up.

That said, all of this happened in lab dishes, and the results were shared by OpenAI and Retro themselves rather than in a peer-reviewed journal. Also, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is an investor in Retro. Still, it's a striking sign that AI can help redesign some of biology's most important tools, and it gives regenerative medicine a promising new way to build them.

source: OpenAI & Retro Biosciences. (2025, August 22). Accelerating life sciences research. OpenAI.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Crazy goings-on in Austria

[The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦 @Rob_ThaBuilder]

This is the kind of headline you read and your mind just refuses to believe it. You assume there must be some exaggeration or misinformation, or some nuanced fact is being exploited to paint an inaccurate picture.

Because surely it cant be this, right? Surely theres no way a 20 y/o man could have his sentence overturned because it wasnt established at his trial whether he "thought he was having consensual sex with a 10 y/o".

But then you read the article (article 🔗'd in reply) and thats literally what it is. This is what makes ppl think our leaders hate us, this is what deligitimizes the Liberal project in many people's minds.

Like many liberal-minded people of my generation, I grew up believing that progressivism promised a better way, a more fair and just world, where people really WERE judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

When I see stuff like this, i cannot help but think something is deeply wrong with the state of the modern Left. After all, to paraphrase the psycho from No Country For Old Men:

"If the liberalism you followed brought you to this....of what use was your liberalism?"

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Ok…interesting times

[Andrew Curran @AndrewCurran_]

The AI Futures Project have updated their timelines. They say we are five months ahead of AI 2027, and they now believe a Superhuman AI Researcher will arrive sometime in 2027.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Idiocy

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

We got Creatine ID before Voter ID.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Fix this @MIT I’m ashamed to be an alum

[Daniella Romeo @Daniellavromeo]

I can't move past the discovery phase of MIT Kristin Knouse's text messages and journal entries. The texts between her colleagues, her texts with scientist David Sabatini, and her private thoughts paint a completely different picture than the story she invented for the media and handed to Whitehead Institute/MIT administrators.

Kristin Knouse was in a consensual relationship with MIT scientist David Sabatini. She was a willing, enthusiastic participant in their relationship, she greenlit sexual engagements and prompted them herself. At no point were there discussions of assault, rape, or "going too far."

Everything changed when their relationship ended and it was time to move on. She “split" on David, and began plotting a widespread smear campaign with the goal of eliminating him at all costs. She used her own reputation/merit, combined with institutional power (residual effects of MeToo), to systematically destroy this man's entire life, presumably because her ego was bruised and she refused to accept the relationship outcome. Kristin *turned herself* into a victim in order to justify seeking revenge on an innocent man.

[MAHA Action @MAHA_Action]

RFK Jr. says a Fargo steakhouse owner ditched seed oils after hearing him talk about beef tallow on Joe Rogan.

Now he’s saving $4,000 a month, and customers overwhelmingly prefer the taste.

“On the menu, there was a big black square, and it said, ‘Beef tallow fat only in this restaurant.’”

“The owner came over and he pointed to that square and he said, ‘That’s because of you, I heard you on the Joe Rogan podcast and you were talking about how McDonald’s used to use beef tallow fat.’”

“‘I had never heard of beef tallow fat.’”

“‘I started researching it and found out how crazy it was what we were doing, and we figured out how to replace all the seed oils and bring in tallow fat.’”

“‘We were told that it was gonna be very expensive, but I’m saving $4,000 a month.’”

“And he said, ‘My restaurant’s reviews have gone through the roof.’”

“He also said, ‘We did a whole series of blind taste tests of seed oils versus beef tallow. 100% of them chose the beef tallow.’”

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Well, good!!

[MTS @MTSlive]

SITUATION DETECTED: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI breakthroughs will turn cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, and mental illness into "relics of the past" in less than a decade, ushering in "an age of miracles."

[Matt Kramer 🌙 @kramerposts]

This feels eerily similar to how progressive environmental activists in the 1970s, scientifically illiterate and hopped up on their own moral infallibility, managed to successfully block widespread nuclear energy adoption at that critical juncture in history. Now we’re living in a world where energy is far less clean and abundant than it could have been, and—as is often the case with politics—nobody ever learns the lesson.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

@sridhartheyaafa @TylerAlterman Good question. We bay people don’t mind when folks move to NYC. It’s fine that different people like different places

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Redwood City is nice

[Jim Savage @savage_acro]

Work is a lot more fun. Weather and cycling is great. Food in SF is comparable to ...Canberra. Everything else is much worse than NYC.

Makes you realize why so many take the south bay bargain. All the agglomeration/talent density of SF, less of the disamenity. And SF doesn't have much big-city amenity anyhow (other than talent density), so you're not missing out.

[Christine Peterson @lifeext]

Er, why do they let people ride the bus without paying? Crazy

[Tom Elliott @tomselliott]

A new report from Washington, D.C., finds "64% of bus riders still do not pay fares," which is threatening the sustainability of the city's public transportation.

D.C.'s solution? An 11 percent fare hike for those who do pay.