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:

• 1st: Oxford (no need to explain)
• 2nd: Manchester (it's near Oxford, John Harris is there, one of the foremost researchers on moral enhancement)
• 3rd: Stockholm (where everyone is born a transhumanist)
• 3rd: Wellington, New Zealand (Nicholas Agar is there, one of the foremost researchers on moral enhancement)
• 4th: Some places in continental Europe I'm still investigating (e.g.: Zurich , Munich)
• 4th: Brazil (bioethics program in Rio de Janeiro)

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:

• World Values Survey: Already explained above, I believe is one of the most important. But I wonder if I'm not biased and fixated on this. I would also like to have a Cities Values Survey, since in reality I'm choosing cities.

• Quality of life: It should matter. But I haven't found a good index for not-huge cities. The index for countries are well know. Sweden and New Zealand take the lead, then England and after a while Brazil. However, obviously, being an expatriate changes things a lot. If you know of an expatriates' quality of life index for cities or countries, please, let me know. However, there's one good indicator for expatriates available, but it is only for countries though.

• Happiness: It should matter. Or, it might not vary for the same individual between countries. I don't know. It is more or less the same as for quality of life, since it is a major component of it.

• Relative closeness to other countries: I'm having a hard time spelling out this one, but check this comment by Kaj.

• Language barrier: This is hard to account for. I'm expecting that in no developed country I would be put in a situation where relevant people (from my university) would not be talking in English if I'm on the conversation. If it is not true, this is majorly relevant. If it is true, this is mildly relevant. I would expect this would be both a function of English proficiency and willingness to talk in English. Note Sweden is the highest in proficiency and the rest of continental Europe is the lowest. However, I do not know how to find the "willingness" factor.

• Socio-economic system: Highly relevant. I believe this is accounted for on the World Values Survey, as type of government strongly covaries with values. More modern (rational-secular/self-expressing) have more liberal systems, while less modern have more strong governments. (while the really ancient ones have almost no State).

• Public transport and real estate: Highly practical and I would not have thought if not for the comments. Commuting times and cost are very important. Real estate also, one of the many reasons I have not considered London was because of extremely high rents. Also, this brings back to mind why I posted this. I remember reading a very useful post on how to choose a house, where it pointed out to many relevant but unaccounted factors, commuting was one of them. What I want is something similar for cities.

• Finances: It is mildly relevant, I do not believe I will have a desire for anything else besides researching, specially in Oxford. But I might be wrong. How I will finance myself is still a bit uncertain. For high ranking universities I will probably have a scholarship from Brazil, otherwise I will need a scholarship from elsewhere. With the probabilities in brackets, and some living costs factored in:
  • Oxford: Brazilian government scholarship. They will give me 1100 EUR per month besides paying for all the fees and accommodation. They pay one international travel per year. (90%) High living costs.
  • Manchester, same as above. (70%)
  • Stockholm: Swedish government salary (there a PhD is a job). For an Physics position it was ~2500 EUR per month.(100%) It has a very high living cost for expatriates
  • Wellington: I don't know, but will find out.
  • Brazil: 950 EUR per month (70%). Low living costs. 
• International status: Makes a huge difference if one lives in a city by desire or by merely being born there. Prima facie, one should be more interesting if she is there by desire. Thus, I should give priority to more international cities. I will have to use anecdotal evidence here, since on normal datasets low skilled immigrants will dominate the sample. If I were less busy, I would compile data on an university-by-university basis.

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).

Hi all, I'm leaving Lesswrong for a few months to pursue a Masters, and this Text below will never be finished. It is just a story of what is it like to grow up outside where everything is going on, a country where humanities are sad and terrible, and people are fun, but not quite wise. 

Original Summary: Two things (Note: Were going to) permeate this text, an autobiographical short account of what is it like to grow up far from where things are happening, and an outside view account of some of the people and institutions (MIRI,LW,Leverage Research, FHI,80k,GWWC) whom presently carry, as far as I can see, the highest expected value gamble of our time. I have visited all those institutions, and my account here should be considered just a biased, one subjective perspective data point, not a proper evaluation of those places. Other people who come from developing world countries might have interesting stories to tell, and I'd encourage them to do so (Pablo in Argentina, many in India, China and elsewhere)

(NOTE: There is nothing about the institutions here, only the growing up part was written by the time I decided to halt this writing)

Far away, across the sea

As is the case with most outliers, outcasts, and outsiders in general, a large amount of sociological facts were determinant of me being the first person in Brazil acquainted with the cluster of ideas to which the institutions mentioned belong. Jonatas, the other Brazilian who entered this world early on (2004), has a very similar story to tell. The prerequisites seem to have been: young, middle class, children of early adopters, inclined towards philosophy, living in a cosmopolitan area, with a particular disregard for authority (uncommon in Brazil), high IQ (aprox 4 SDs above Brazilian average) beginning to get stuck in a nonsense university system in the humanities. Due to expected income considerations and a large variance in income among Brazilians, most of the high IQ people go for Medicine, Engineering, Law and sometimes physical sciences. Thus many of the humanities become just signalling that you praise the right authorities (right here meaning whomever your advisor or professor was compelled to praise by his professor) and the cycle rolls on and on. 

So I was left with good resources (time, curiosity, intellectual eagerness) and internet access. The web changed it all. It was hard to capture the signal among the noise in the intellectual world there, and my path was reading an interview in a magazine with this guy who thought so differently that he seemed amazing, a biogeographist is what the magazine called him (I had to invent a meaning for that), that was Jared Diamond. Then Guns Germs and Steel, and, buying books, waiting two months for them to come, I slowly built a foundational knowledge of the Third Culture people, those whom John Brockman currently gathers on The Edge website. 

It seemed they were sensible and smart people, Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, and many others. Yet in our closed country in the humanities, no one had any idea of what that was all about. Understandably, I frequently thought I was wrong, or crazy, since that is what others thought about me. The neodarwinians were a huge problem in the moral punishing intellectual world I was living, they were enough to make you an outcast, an untouchable perhaps. But they were not the worse, the worse was yet to come.

 The worse was when I found Aubrey de Grey and Nick Bostrom. I should call those early years the schizophrenic ones, because only focusing all my brainpower in being schizophrenic could I possibly survive among my peers while considering the opinions and thoughts of those two individuals sensible and worthy. It has recently been pointed out in one the best posts here that:

 Any idiot can tell you why death is bad, but it takes a very particular sort of idiot to believe that death might be good.

- Yvain 

That very particular sort of idiot composes 98% of our humanities academy, the intelligence that is valued is the subtle and sophisticated one that makes small benefits salient while concealing obviously enormous costs, or the one that signals capacity while making the world a worse place. 

At the young age of eighteen I was learning Freudian babble during the day, reading Russell at late afternoon, since he was both sensible and acceptable among my peers, being a 100 years old Lord, and subscribed to the Shock Level 4 email group controlled by Eliezer at night, noticing that something really big was going on and not having anyone around to talk about it. I'd be thinking about the Simulation Argument, and my friends would be thinking about what the teacher's password was for that particular behaviorist explanation that was discredited 70 years ago, and how they hated it because the Freudian alternative obviously felt right. It takes schizophrenia to survive in the wild. 

The Path Became Smooth

Time went by, memes were spread and slowly but steadily it was possible to come out of the closet about a lot of my beliefs and thoughts. The classes on how to write ambiguous commentaries on Hegel didn't stop, but the sanity waterline was being raised, specially among my colleagues who were pursuing exact science degrees. 2008 was the shifting point, suddenly I met one other Transhumanist, and eventually a rationalist, and near the end an utilitarian. Schizophrenia was no longer that necessary. Fast forward to now 2013 and you have many of those ideas, such as Singularity, ending ageing, considering cognitive science a part of psychology, brain machine interface, etc... all on the cover page of major magazines and being topic of conversation on TV shows.  

Some few people started actually caring about that. Meanwhile something else was growing, the Effective Altruist movement.

(here this abruptly finishes, and won't be continued)

Today this girl I met comes to my place, allegedly to get some books about her new interests, singularity, immortalism, cryonics.

Actually, she wanted to ask me a question, a question about which I could use some rational opinion.

She says: "So, here is the real reason I came here. I'm thinking of making a documentary, a movie, and it would be about, well.... about you."

(I am shocked)

"So, yes, a movie about you, and the fact that you want to live forever, it would have interviews with friends, parents, girlfriend, and a lot with you" "What do you think?" 

(I sit down in the floor to think about it)

The conversation continues and I generally sense she wants to do something interesting, somewhat controversial, kind of humoristic, but at the same time striking some topics that are really unheard of around here (Brazil)

Now, I am looking for opinions. From an utilitarian perspective, and given that I am directing the Humanity+ or Transhumanist group of Brazilians, should I go with it?   My concern is basically not about me, but about how will a movie about me influence, positively or negatively, the growing H+ movement in Brazil, given the inferential distances, prejudices, and mysterianism that might surround the whole interaction between the movie's memes, and the spectator's memes. 

(from here below, the translation is google tradutor, not mine)

Positive aspects: The film would be seen at festivals, and at least a few hundred to tens of thousands of people would see it. These people might be intrigued by the prospect of living much, and it could become a platform for attracting people to transhumanismolatino (and eventually to other stuff, like GWWC and Singinst, but that is a side dish).

It would be a good opportunity to bring out various issues that in Brazil have been neglected until now. (cryonics, transhumanism, biological immortality, singularity)

Reinforce my good habits, like eating healthily, work more earnestly, etc ...

Negative aspects: it may end up passing a bad image of me (imagine the mythical average person, not that smart, somewhat religious,  seeing a  guy who wants to live forever in a video, is very strange) and therefore my bad image would spread to stuff I represent, like the Provisional Team, the Singularity Institute, Transhumanismo Latino, etc......

May defame my image with women (who would date an immortalist after all .....)

 I may become a stigma simplified, I  would just be classified as an immortalist, and no other characteristics will ever cross the knowledge of people, they always see me just like that. And the institutions that I represent / drive, would suffer accordingly.

I have put up a poll in the comment section down here, so that I can know your opinion, please take the time to vote, thank you.