I wrote:

Humans … slowly gain competence over a lifetime, usually reaching peak productivity in our forties and fifties. … When people get idealistic, they tend to forget this. … They want to know how to most help the world in the next few years, not over their lifetime. … Young folks … should expect to prepare and learn while young, and then have their biggest influence in their peak years.

Alex Waller disagrees:

When I’m 50 I don’t really want the world to be the way it is now. I don’t want to bide my time and merely learn and network idly for another decade or two while someone else is responsible for enacting positive change in the world.

News flash: you are just one of seven billion, so you aren’t going to personally make much difference. The world will have nearly as many problems worth solving then as now, with or without your help.

Let’s say I was the CEO of a small corporation that developed medical devices. … A sustainable revenue stream requires projects with a variety of timelines. Similarly, I shouldn’t only invest my company’s resources in a project with a huge payout that will take 15 years.

The world already has a big portfolio of idealistic projects. If you want your life to be one of those projects, you should accept that it has a natural timescale. There’s a best time to invest, and a best time to reap returns.

Hanson elicits skepticism in the idea that social changes enacted now will positively impact the future, without justification.

I’m not skeptical of future impacts, just of their typically growing in impact faster than financial investments.

However, I’d counter-argue that his position is just as weak: name someone who is making better-than-inflation on their investments in the last 11 years?

The last few years have been quite unusual in finance. Feasible long term financial rates of return are higher than economic growth rates.

If I am to put off charity for 20 years to compound interest, why not put it off 40 years to compound even more? Why not put it off for 100 years?

Why not indeed? If you think that your personal monitoring adds much value, you might want to spend before you die, so you can personally monitor your charities. Else you might instruct your charity fund to grow until it seems that worthy causes are about to run out, or that investments no longer grow.

Hanson totally misguides when he suggests that Young Idealism is sexually motivated.

I said “signal one’s attractiveness to potential associates.” I didn’t mention sex.

Then what explains extra altruism in the old?

I said “people tend more to form associations when young.” This implies only that old folks have a weaker need to signal, not that they have no need to signal.