Assuming the conclusion. The question is are the outcomes equivalent...

It's an unfair comparison because widow-burning comes with strong emotional/moral connotations, irrespective of actual outcomes. It's like (forgive me) comparing someone to Hitler, in the sense that even if the outcome you're talking about is equivalent to Hitler, the emotional reaction that "X is like Hitler" provokes is still disproportionately too large. (Meta-note: Let's call this Meta-Godwin's Law: comparing something to comparing something to Hitler.)

As for the actual outcomes: It seems to me that there is some asymmetry because the widow is spending their husband's money after they are dead, whereas the cryonicist is doing the spending while they are still around. But I'll drop this point because, as you said, I am less interested in the actual argument and more interested in how it was framed.

Reading your comment, I get the feeling you're not actually grappling with the argument but instead venting about tone and values and outgroups.

Yes; I explicitly stated this in my fifth bullet point.

Oh, so if the husband agrees not to go out to bars, then cryonics is now acceptable to you and the wife? A mutual satisfaction of preferences, and given how expensive alcohol is, it evens the financial tables too! Color me skeptical that this would actually work...

This is not at all what I'm arguing. I am arguing that Hanson's post pattern-matches to a common male stereotype, the overly-controlling wife. Quoting myself, "This is a very male view of what a long-term relationship should be like, without anything to counterbalance it." I don't think the exchange you describe would actually work in practice.

If this were a religious dispute, like, say, which faith to raise the kids in, would you be objecting? Is it 'selfish' for a Jewish dad to want to raise his kids Jewish? If it is, you seem to be seriously privileging the preferences of wives over husbands on all matters, and if not, it'd be interesting to see you try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!

Forgive me, I do not understand how this is related to the point I was making. I don't see the correspondence between this and cryonics. Additionally, this example is a massive mind-killer for me for personal reasons and I don't think I'm capable of discussing it in a rational manner. I'll just say a few more things on this point: I am not accusing cryonicists of being selfish. I am saying that it is unreasonable for Hanson to accuse wives of being selfish because of the large, presumably negative impact it has on a relationship. I am also not attempting to privilege wives' preferences over husbands; apologies for any miscommunication that caused that perception. I should probably also add that I am male, which may help make this claim more credible.

try to find a distinction which makes some choices of education more important than cryonics!

Side comment: I have no idea how to even begin comparing these two things, but I think this point is indicative of the large inferential gap between you and I. My System 1 response was to value choice of religious education over cryonics, whereas you seem to be implying (if I'm parsing your comment correctly, which I may not be) that the latter is clearly more important.

Opposition to cryonics really is a gender issue: look at how many men versus women are signed up! That alone is sufficient (cryonicist wives? rare as hen's teeth), but actually, there's even better data than that in "Is That What Love is? The Hostile Wife Phenomenon in Cryonics", by Michael G. Darwin, Chana de Wolf, and Aschwin de Wolf; look at the table in the appendix.

Whoops. Ok. I didn't realize that.

Oh, of course. In fact, before I saw your comment I changed the wording to "untrue stereotype." Some stereotypes are indeed true and/or useful. What I object to is assuming that certain stereotypes are true without evidence, and speaking as if they are true, especially when said stereotypes make strong moral claims about some group. This is what Hanson does in Modern Male Sati and Is Overcoming Bias Male?

Edit: Tone is also important. Talking about some group as if they are an out-group is generally a bad thing. The two posts by Hanson that I mentioned talk about women as if they are weird alien creatures who happen to visit his blog.