I know at least 10 Swedes, all of them attest to this. If you go through their departments, it becomes obvious also. It seems to be part of their culture by now. It is a technological oriented country. The downside is that universities there aren't so good as in UK. Merely the fact I know 10 Swedes, all transhumanists, while living in Brazil, being antisocial, and never being there, it is an evidence.
I don't think Sweden is significantly more transhumanist than several other western European countries. The fact that two influential transhumanists (Bostrom and Sandberg) are Swedish could be due to chance. Once they became known, they may have attracted a disproportionate number of Swedes to adopt similar views, but that number is still trivial compared to the population as a whole. In fact, it could be that the general egalitarian sentiment makes Swedes less likely to accept certain transhumanist positions (even though that sentiment is arguably weaker today than it was a few decades ago).
EDIT: I've found a very relevant indicator for my question, see "Quality of life" criteria below.
My main question is: which non-academic factors should I consider when moving to another country/city for a PhD? Further, I would also like to evaluate each country/city1 according to those criteria, but first I need to know which are the relevant criteria. If you know any (any at all) scientific literature on moving to another country and well being, let me know.
I've lived in Brazil all my life, I really like it here for many reasons. Mostly, by how personal relationships are established and maintained. However, Brazil's inability to construct a stable well developed society have crippled my intellectual development, and I simply cannot take it anymore - my brain will die here. Moreover, I feel like most of my high level desires(values) are much more in line with countries on the other end of the World Values Survey graphic. I have rational/secular and self-expressing values, instead of traditional-survival oriented ones. For all those reasons, I will be applying for my PhD aboard. I have pondered many of the career and academic factors involved, and I've had the help of many good and objective indexes available (e.g.: here and here). I've mapped most of the Departments of Philosophy in which I could research my topic (moral enhancement), and I believe these are the major factors. However, there is one other important factor I'm a bit clueless about: which country/city is better in all other aspects already not accounted by academic criteria?
My main options are2:
However, this list is solely based on academic criteria. I need to factor in non-academic criteria. In fact, I do not even know which are the relevant non-academic criteria. That would be my first question. I got fixated on the World Values Survey factors, but I might be wrong. I would gather the happiness index is important, but it might not vary for the same individual between countries, or it might covary oddly with the happiness index of the destination country. My second question would be how each country/city is ranked according to these criteria.
There are many things that will be affected by accessing these other factors. First, I think Oxford is far, far above the 2nd option. But it is above enough that if I do not get in there on the first time (80% probability), I should wait and apply next year again instead of going to somewhere else where I did get accepted? Second, my current plan is to build the strongest possible application for Oxford and use it elsewhere. But if Oxford is not so clearly the undisputed 1st place, then I should be more concerned with building a good application that also accounted for other countries specific criteria. Furthermore, right now, I think I have a major bias against New Zealand. In terms of moral enhancement research it would be the second best after Oxford, it has huge human development, freedom and happiness indexes. However, the fact it is in the freaking middle of nowhere is very discouraging. Am I wrong about this? What are the correct factors I should be accounting for?
Here is a list of the factors I could gather from the comments, mostly the one by MathiasZaman:
Finally, please remember this not a competition between countries or cities and refrain for expressing any, however tiny, nationalism on the comments. I'm not expressing my subjective feelings either, I'm merely trying to find out the relevant factors and how countries or cities rank according to them.
Footnotes:
1. I would mostly like to be comparing cities, which was what I did when accounting for academic criteria, however (a) some datas are only available for countries, (b) in some cases I do not know to which city I will go and (c) this makes the analysis more complex.
2. US is out of the table for 4 reasons: (1) I would have to throw my MPhil on the garbage and start over. (2) Isn't that far away from a survival-traditional oriented society. (3) GRE (philosophy is the most competitive PhD program, I would have to nearly ace it, and I simply can't do that at the present time) (4) Doesn't have many transhumanistic oriented philosophy departments, specially on the top universities. Canada is out for (1), (3) and (4).