In this thread, I would like to invite people to summarize their attitude to Effective Altruism and to summarise their justification for their attitude while identifying the framework or perspective their using.

Initially I prepared an article for a discussion post (that got rather long) and I realised it was from a starkly utilitarian value system with capitalistic economic assumptions. I'm interested in exploring the possibility that I'm unjustly mindkilling EA.

I've posted my write-up as a comment to this thread so it doesn't get more air time than anyone else's summarise and they can be benefit equally from the contrasting views.

I encourage anyone who participates to write up their summary and identify their perspective BEFORE they read the others, so that the contrast can be most plain.

Less Wrongers are a diverse crowd, more so now than in the early days.  I wonder if we could step away from anti-generalizations, generalize and try to say good places to live, under a few assumptions (remember, the idea of an assumption is to assume it, not to claim it is less or more representative of observation class X or Y and then go on to nerdify it.)

Recetly, Xanghai was claimed as an interesting place to teach english. 

Just having returned from 15 days in Rio de Janeiro, I may talk a little about it.

Assumptions:

1) Assuming your family lives somewhere else, other state or country.

2) No children yet. Single, Married, Gay, Bisexual, Male, Female.

3) You can muster $1-4k a month (teaching a language, like English, programming, writing, family money, lottery, spy for the CIA)

4) You like science/philosophy, rationality, and not a complete misanthrope (you'd hug five times more than you do if given a chance, and you'd double the number of close friends you have, as well as balance their gender ratio)

My suggested format is city name, time spend there, experience, cons, and pros.

Rio de Janeiro,15 days, Rio is an interesting city. Near the subway you can get to the vast majority of places without a car, a good night out will cost between 15-40 dollars, depending on whether you drink or not, and therefore need a cab home. Nice dinner 12-50.  There are millions of people including lots of tourists easily reachable there. So unless you are estonian, you will be able to find someone from home there. Because travellers go to Rio for it's beauty, you can find them in free places, and make friends with locals and foreigners alike, allowing for short term and long term friendships. They say you get tired eventually, but the natural beauty is great and spread. Forests and beaches and mountains abound, all 4 minutes away from a supermarket.There are nearly free public bikes in some areas.

Cons: Science/philosophy are not what Rio is known for. Their universities are good, and you can find youe way there if you can in a good college, but a meeting with a lot of people to discuss two boxing on newcomb is less likely in the following ten years.You can't park in Rio during the day, if somehow you managed to have a car and a carplace in your apartment. You won't buy a place,and it won't be big, an awesome ipanema apartment 190sq meters goes for 2,3 million dollars, and renting a tiny place costs about 1thousand a month.

Pros: Papers to the contrary, weather does impact your life for quite a while if you pay attention to it. Not necessarily the weather itself, but the social oppotunities that arise because of it (moonlight music at the beach, free overhearing music in the bohemian neighborhood, dancing as opposed to freezing, etc...) can be, literally, life-changing.  Rio has many people not from Rio, so it is easy to befriend them, they also need new friends.  The Couchsurfing community is active and speaks english.

Neutral: Many think that people (specially women) look amazing in Brazil, quite the contrary. Our average look is way below your expectations, but the top5% of people are really better looking to foreigner eyes than the 5%of their own country. Long tails, pun intended.

If you lived for a while in a city that you'd like to recommend to some niche Less Wrongers, report. Avoid doing so for the city you were born in, since a native experience differs violently from a migrant/immigrant experience.