May Max Chiswick's Memory Be A Blessing

Malaria claims the life of someone I knew

I didn’t know Max Chiswick very well.

I first met him at Manifest—a prediction markets conference. The details are hazy, but I believe he attended my talk about anthropics. I think we spoke briefly during that conference, though I don’t have particularly clear memories of it.

I got to know him a lot better at Caplacon, Bryan Caplan’s annual conference. I spent a lot of Caplacon playing poker, with Max, a friend of mine, and one or two other people. Max was a likeable guy—I found him friendly and charming. Apparently I was not alone in that assessment; across the board, everyone who has spoken about him has described him fondly. A friend of Max described him well, in a piece that’s deeply moving and worth reading if you want to know more about Max:

He was earnest and optimistic—unpretentious and generous—passionate and kind. He believed that we could just build things if we wanted to, and that it didn’t need to be more complicated than that. I find it easy to get wrapped up in anxieties and doubts and paralysis when starting a new project, but when Max went first to break the ice, he just…started doing things. Programming. Organizing. Planning. He wrote first drafts, plans, and prototypes like breathing.

As far as I could tell, he ate a bag of carrots every day. If we took a break from working and a walk around the block together, we’d wander into the Trader Joe’s; I wouldn’t buy anything and he’d buy two bags of carrots. I mean, he ate plenty else​, most of it intentionally planned, but you’d notice the carrots first.

…

He wanted the world to be better, and so in his un-anxious, Max-y way, went about doing what he could do about it. He had more money than he needed to make himself happy, and he gave it to charities that he thought could improve the lives of others. And he cared about his impact and not just his gestures, so GiveWell​ suited him well.

The blogger Old Jewish Man wrote another deeply moving eulogy. Ultimately, these provide much better descriptions of Max than I could ever provide for they were each written by people who knew Max well. Old Jewish Man describes something that many who knew him have repeated, that Max was always on the move, always working on interesting projects, always active:

Max Chiswick (pronounced chis-ICK), or simply “Chis” to many, seemed to be everywhere all at once. In the month before he died, Chiswick was in New York, San Francisco, Miami, Turkey, Senegal, Singapore and Israel. And, we can only assume, dozens of Whole Foods locations.

This, however, was typical. He was, somehow, in every country in the world while also in transit, chatting with you from 36,000 feet in the air. At one moment he was teaching probability and risk assessment to kids in Senegal, the next cruising a comped buffet in Vegas while also magically seeing you tomorrow for Shabbos dinner in Crown Heights. The lifestyle left friends confused yet impressed by his ability to juggle time zones. Somehow Chiswick always managed to be where you needed him. He lived everywhere and nowhere. But he wasn’t a ghost. He was the opposite: a constant presence in the lives of those he loved and who loved him. He could sleep on anything, and even preferred couches and floors. He talked a lot about airline travel, about points and how to spend your way into what he called “premium status.” It was in a way a joke, but also, a way of life.

He was always on the move, with a backpack full of organic produce, bike helmet in hand, a tennis racket on his back, zip-off cargo pants and laceless Salomon shoes; he was usually coming from or going to some obscure place for some bizarre reason that made perfect sense only to him. Friends recall receiving texts from Max at various airport lounges where he liked to survey the buffet with a keen eye for value, rating the offerings by the amount of protein on hand. Chiswick kept a diary cataloguing the eggs he ate during hotel stays; a brilliant idea that one BHIF editor believes “deserved more attention.” Chis told friends that food should be “bland but packed with nutrition,” and we should be conscious of calorie-to-dollar restaurant offerings. Max once catalogued every single item at the Cheesecake Factory, the biggest menu in the world. He stayed away from processed foods and took great care of his body.

One of my friends, who also met him at Caplacon (he was aforementioned person playing poker with Max and I) described Max as follows:

Max's aura was quietly-confident in the limit. He appeared emotionally unshakable and dominant but without a hint of violence, nor a willingness to, say, raise his voice.

• He possessed a rare humility. So far as I can tell, he was entirely free of a type of ego -- the one that makes you bored someone else takes the podium to share their passions. I was the beneficiary of this on several occasions.

• A good person, selflessly and steadfastly motivated to make the world a better place.

• He was smart and interested in the right things. And fun to talk to about those things. His universal popularity is therefore unsurprising.

I regret not expressing these opinions to him.

On January 12, I learned that Max had died. When traveling in Senegal, he contracted malaria, but only thought it was a flu. By the time he got to Israel, the malaria had gotten to his brain. It killed him.

How tragic and ironic that Max, someone who gave his money fighting malaria, was ultimately killed by that same disease. As Ross Rheingans-Yoo said:

Max Chiswick died of malaria.

Max wanted to end malaria. He worked on ending malaria.

No, he wasn’t a doctor or a researcher, but he gave money to GiveWell​ because he believed that people not dying of malaria​ was a thing he wanted turn his resources toward—and wanted more than anything else he could buy with those dollars—and because as a player of games he thought that GiveWell’s research was the best bet he could find to put his dollars on.

As I count these things​, Max Chiswick warred on Death, for lives.

I will never know most of the people who die of malaria. Most of its more than half a million annual victims live in desperately poor countries, quite far away from me. But Max was someone I knew. He was someone I’d sat and played cards with, someone who I would have been excited to see again at future rationalist meetings.

But because of malaria, a problem Max fought against, he is gone—dead at 39.

On my birthday, in response to my blog post about turning 21, Max sent me an email wishing me a happy birthday:

Happy birthday!

Is the fundraiser supposed to be in GBP? (Maybe cause they're based there?) Two of my interests are expected value and Judaism.

What do you think of starting a "One Life Pledge"? I.e. pledge at least the current estimated value of a life each year ($3-5.5k currently?). More manageable than the 10% pledge for many and very tangible in general terms (save a life), expected value terms (EV of a life), and Jewish terms (for anybody who saves a single life it is as if he saves an entire world).

In Max’s honor, I would join his friend Ross in encouraging you to give to Givewell or one day sooner, two charitable organizations Max had a very high opinion of. Reading about Max’s life, and just how many lives he positively affected, the Jewish mantra Max quoted about saving a life being like saving the world rings as true as it ever does. The life of a single person is of incalculable value—and far too many lives are snuffed out by malaria, the problem that killed him. The destruction of Max’s life is like a world destroyed—harming each of the many, many people who Max’s life positively touched.

In his honor, I’d encourage you to take the one life pledge—pledging to give at least enough to effective charities to save a life. As the destruction of Max’s life is like the destruction of a world, in saving a life from malaria, it will be as if you have saved an entire world.