You are right. There are people who believe that nothing is worse than death. There are also people who believe that in the primordial past, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure. I believe that both are wrong. I am not surprised at the existence of people who disagree. I would be surprised by the existence of people who have critically considered their beliefs and decided that there is no fate worse than death, and I would be very interested to hear them explain why they believe this.
I don't, however, believe that just because there are fates worse than death, you should ever kill yourself, for the reason that we can't see the future, and it is a terrible thing for someone to die who could have possibly had positive life experiences in the future.
Good point. In retrospect there was nothing exceptional about their misunderstanding of their own minds. I do, however, disagree with an unconditional condemnation of suicide due to the possibility of of a positive singularity. Just because we can't see the future doesn't mean we can't make a judgment under uncertainty. Some probability of a fate worse than death must cancel a sufficiently low probability of whatever good experiences are possible. Also, if a sufficiently large amount of money is necessary to prolong someone's life, perhaps that money could be better spent on improving the chance of a positive singularity for everyone, depending on the exact results of the expected utility calculation.
The claim has been made that, all things being equal, it is better to be alive than dead. I dissent.
It is much more complicated than this. If I knew somehow that I would spend the next fifty years of my life in Guantanamo bay, I would rather kill myself than suffer that fate. If a fortune teller showed me that I would be in a car crash and lose all sensory input, but would be kept blissfully comatose on cocaine and ecstasy, I would get my affairs in order and end my own life. And yet, if I knew that every day for the next 50 years I would be horribly tortured, but my experience would eliminate suffering from everywhere else in the entire world, I would accept the fate and do my best to steel my mind for the horror that would be my life.
I want to feel like my existence has purpose. I want to make the world a better place to live in for other people. I want to be happy and experience pleasure. These, not a primordial drive to keep myself alive, are my motivations. Killing myself would be the only rational chice if I knew that my life would be worse than my death.
I'm not trying to advocate suicide. I'm simply saying that the will to live is not a basic motivating factor for most human beings. So when the argument is made against life extending technology, rather than countering it with "all things being equal," try "existence being pleasurable..." But don't claim that existence of sentient beings is inherently good.