Token — a Unit of Irresponsibility | Blog<br>What’s a token, you might ask? Those things everyone’s talking about — the expensive ones. Well, a token is a thing that shows you how irresponsible a person is. (The actual technical definition of the word “token” will follow.)

Let’s dive in.

First, let’s talk about responsibility and irresponsibility as a general subject.

I don’t think of responsibility as a “state where you ought to do something.” Not at all. Let’s look in the dictionary:<br>Work with me<br>Need an AI integration in your business?<br>I build AI systems for real companies — from legacy modernization to production LLM workflows. Check out my company:<br>investmentfidelity.company →

responsibility noun (plural responsibilities)<br>the state or fact of having a duty to deal with something, or of having control over someone.

And just so we don’t miss the crucial point:

duty noun (plural duties)<br>a moral or legal obligation.

So if you’re responsible for something, you consider that you have a duty — and you have control over it. I know that might sound terrible, but in fact it’s a great thing. If you have control over something, you can direct that something to be helpful and to survive better.

A person who is responsible for a car keeps his car in working order — clean and neat. A person who is responsible for his equipment keeps his equipment operational. An accountant who is responsible for the books keeps them reconciled.

Responsibility is not the state of being blamed for something that isn’t right. That, actually, is a good example of irresponsibility. You’re either a pro and everything’s in order, or you goofed somewhere down the line and now you’re everyone’s target.

Alright.

Now — a person who is irresponsible for an area is desperately trying to avoid it. A good manager knows something’s cooking, that someone has other fish to fry, when a guy doesn’t show up to meetings and doesn’t report on time. A person who can’t handle his car will desperately avoid going near it. If the car’s old and rusty, he’ll do everything in his power not to come near it. And if life is so “unfair” that he’s forced to use it — well, now you’ve got that well-known “numb” feeling. A guy doing something only because he’s forced to. He doesn’t want to do it, he’s not present, he doesn’t want to be present, and he just robotically goes through the motions instead of actually doing them.

Why is a person irresponsible for something? Well, that’s a sad story — and we’ll tell it next time.

A gruesome example

Let’s look at some historical examples of irresponsibility. In the good old days, when fire was a novelty and we were roaming the veldt in search of a fresh mammoth, we had a way of un-aliving others. It was rather direct — stones, or your own muscles. If Ug was a menace to you, you had a chance to go and make Ug silent forever. But this was a very direct action. You knew what you were doing, and you had to know WHAT you were getting ready to do. You had to weigh your chances and find a good rock to strike Ug down with.

Over time, however, we invented tools so we wouldn’t have to be THAT direct with Ug. Some unfortunate fellow from Rome might be un-alived by means of a spear, and over time we came up with machines to throw those spears from a great distance. The beginning of the last century “gifted” us artillery and other methods of dealing with each other. The middle of it was when we finally came up with a means of remotely destroying — if not the whole planet, then a good 90% of it.

At some point we had to take a break. People got too irresponsible about whom they decided to un-alive. Someone came to their senses, and we ended up cutting down those endless arsenals of nukes.

And yet — welcome to 2026! Modern warfare brings fresh sacrifices to the Grim Reaper’s table. We now have FPV drones that let one kill his fellow brethren from the other side of the planet. You see, there are no duels anymore — no fair fight. We’re now allowed to end someone’s life from the most distant spot you can imagine, so as not to take any responsibility for another’s life.

Well — that was a gruesome example of how this goes wrong. Now let’s look at how it plays out in the other activities of our lives.

The irresponsibility of hiring

I’ve written about this many times already. HR has been, is, and will be the most detached area of irresponsibility there is.

Some 25 years ago I could go online, find the first vacancy, do the interview, and start working two days later. 30 years ago I could just walk into a company and find a job.

What happened? We stopped taking any responsibility for our workforce. There should have been a well-organized balance, a lot of study done on how to actually employ a lot of people. Instead we let some companies run their own shows, completely detached from reality. It’s a dance of many irresponsibilities. A guy, 24 years old, full of dreams of a bright future, carrying his computer science degree, waltzes...