working in a university v. living on social assistance...

pros:
- don't have to teach classes
- are not forced into writing pointless papers to maintain your position
- more control over research
- do not have to communicate with institutional colleagues (can use internet instead)
- do not have to deal with peer review
- no hierarchy
- income is comparable, but assistance-based rather than debt-based.

cons:
- less people will take you seriously (less prestige, too)
- less access (perhaps marginally)
- no social support
- less incentives / more potential for distraction (it's really the latter...)

peer review is kind of a double-edged sword. i'll argue in favour of it for everybody except me. i do think i'm special...

in the above list, i mean it less in terms of formal peer review and more in terms of informal peer pressure. but i used the term consciously because they're inter-related.

i mean, it's something that's needed to catch frauds. no argument. but it also functions as a way to shut down debate. in fields like math and philosophy and economics, and even theoretical biology, there's not a lot of really valid potential for peer review that functions beyond a basic "dude, that calculation is wrong" level. it's almost all peer pressure.

escaping from that in the short term has some potential value.

in the end, it's gotta be peer reviewed. but maybe i'd rather wait until i'm almost dead and can present ideas as a whole before i bother going through it...