Completely agree with the 'depend on circumstances' crowd, although I
have found that the aviation community tends to be split into two
personalities - those who prefer to get "as high as practical", and
those who tend to enjoy staying lower, enjoying the view (for what its
worth, the latter crowd in my experience seems to do more to make sure
they stay over easily land-able terrain, whereas the 'get-high' group
tends to take more direct routing, so I'm not sure one is particularly
more dangerous than the other).

Kinda a 'get up, get there' vs 'low, slow, and enjoy the view'
dichotomy.

I think most of us fall somewhere in between, it the main thing is
what do we want to get out of a particular flight.

About the only exception i'll say in terms of other 'altitude
preference'. When flying heavily congested, open vfr airspace (such
as SF bay on a bay tour), I've always been most comfortable flying at
'250 and '750 altitudes rather than '000 and '500... The rational is
pretty simple - its still trivially easy to track my altitude
precisely (the mind responds faster to vertical or horizontial
orientations on the altimeter than it does reading particular values),
while at the same time, it gets me 'off the beaten path' so to speak.

The safety value is marginal, if nill in reality (between sightseeing
pilot's not holding altitude and differing altimeter calibrations),
but I still do it now out of habit.