There is a challenge here in making the thought experiment specific, conceivable, and still compelling for the majority of people. I think a marginally positive experience like sucking on a cough drop is easy to imagine (even if it is hard to really picture doing it for 40,000 years) and intuitively just slightly better than non-existence minute by minute.
Someone might disagree. There are some who think that existence is intrinsically valuable, so simply having no negative experiences might be enough to have a life well worth living. But it is hard to paint a clear picture of a life that is definitely barely worth living and involves some mix of ups and downs, because you then have to make sure that the ups and downs balance each other out, and this is more difficult to imagine and harder to gauge.
There is a challenge here in making the thought experiment specific, conceivable, and still compelling for the majority of people. I think a marginally positive experience like sucking on a cough drop is easy to imagine (even if it is hard to really picture doing it for 40,000 years) and intuitively just slightly better than non-existence minute by minute.
Someone might disagree. There are some who think that existence is intrinsically valuable, so simply having no negative experiences might be enough to have a life well worth living. But it is hard to paint a clear picture of a life that is definitely barely worth living and involves some mix of ups and downs, because you then have to make sure that the ups and downs balance each other out, and this is more difficult to imagine and harder to gauge.