That's actually part of the point here; rather than donating to something that might produce a cure for cancer, he donated to a building, presumably one that has his name on it. Perhaps someone in the building will find the cure, but said person quite likely would have found it in another building just as well. Especially if the money had gone to research and not bricks and mortar.
If there was a massive shortage of medical research space this may have been a rational contribution, but I do not think that is the most important problem facing medical research right now.
Do consider the text of this reply carefully, please; there's a contingent statement in it. I'm not flatly asserting that donations for buildings would never be useful; rather, the point is that it is very unlikely that this donation was the optimal (or even close to optimal) use of his money in the real world we actually live in (rather than a hypothetical world where well-funded medical researchers have to give up research because they can't find anywhere to do it), if his goal was to actually advance the cause of science and help people, rather than have people tell him how wonderful his contribution is. (Indeed, it is quite likely that he had no reason to perceive a difference between those two things, and again, that difference is a recurring theme in Hanson's writings.)
If there was a massive shortage of medical research space this may have been a rational contribution, but I do not think that is the most important problem facing medical research right now.
Do consider the text of this reply carefully, please; there's a contingent statement in it. I'm not flatly asserting that donations for buildings would never be useful; rather, the point is that it is very unlikely that this donation was the optimal (or even close to optimal) use of his money in the real world we actually live in (rather than a hypothetical world where well-funded medical researchers have to give up research because they can't find anywhere to do it), if his goal was to actually advance the cause of science and help people, rather than have people tell him how wonderful his contribution is. (Indeed, it is quite likely that he had no reason to perceive a difference between those two things, and again, that difference is a recurring theme in Hanson's writings.)