That's a very interesting statement, it's like a transposition of Pascal's wager, an attempt to rationally explain why it's best to believe in God. In other words, this is a rational attempt to explain why it's best to believe living is good, with the same success as Pascal's argument. As far as the pain argument, I don't think that has anything to do with why people think life is better than death, and I don't think you think so either. This can be explored by doing a thought experiment where everyone has the ability to die painlessly by will. I'm not going to flesh that one out, I don't have a lot of time this second.
The connection to belief, is that belief is a bridge over things that can't be rationalized. Sometimes it's things that are false, sometimes it's things that have to be taken at face value because it can't be reasoned to, it's an axiom of life: I am alive and I wish to continue living, I believe living is good. There is no reason to that.
Death cannot be worse or better than being living, because there will be nobody for it to be better or worse for. The only way to judge better or worse is to be alive. The statements are nonsense, we need to short circuit them to do what we were going to do anyway, rational or not, eat sleep and play and all those other things we do.