I maintain a beachfront property in Thailand — a villa of some consequence, suspended above the Andaman Sea like a colonnade upon a velvet cushion. A fifteen-minute kayak carries me to an island where the outhouse is surrounded by living coral, and the fish swim with the optimistic fatalism of creatures who have not yet made my acquaintance with a spear gun.

There are other islands, of course — islands with beach bars, with rum, with the blessed absence of anyone who has ever used the phrase "peer-reviewed" as a substitute for wit.

I am not there now. I am travelling in the United Kingdom, which is rather like being in a very well-organised library where everyone is shouting.

I do not have to be here. I do not have to wade into the swamp of blockchain debates, AI governance, or the desperate little certainties of people who mistake a whitepaper for a thought. I could be in the kayak. I could be drinking something cold beneath a thatched roof while the Pacific performs its ancient, indifferent ballet. I could be killing fish, which at least has the virtue of honesty — the fish do not argue, and they do not appeal to authority.

I engage because I am sick — quite literally sick to the stomach — of a world in which people have stopped thinking and started believing; where the possession of an opinion has replaced the capacity for reason, and where "do your own research" is considered a personality trait rather than a confession of intellectual bankruptcy.

The coral does not argue. The tide asks nothing of me but balance. And yet here I am, dragged from paradise by the singular, exhausting spectacle of a species that has conquered the atom but cannot conquer its own credulity.

There are better uses of my time. There are islands with no Wi-Fi. There are fish who have not yet been speared. But until the world learns to think again, I suppose I shall continue to paddle back.

— C.S.W.