(Content note: minor spoilers for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.)
Scott Aaronson writes about blankfaces,
anyone who enjoys wielding the power entrusted in them to make others miserable
by acting like a cog in a broken machine, rather than like a human being with
courage, judgment, and responsibility for their actions. A blankface meets every
appeal to facts, logic, and plain compassion with the same repetition of rules
and regulations and the same blank stare—a blank stare that, more often than
not, conceals a contemptuous smile.
I want to push back against this a bit.
First, one of the defining aspects of blankfacedness is their internal
experience. It's someone who enjoys wielding their power. This is a very hard
thing to judge from the outside.
I used to work in a cinema. One day a mother came in with her young child,
perhaps fivish years old. She was late for a busy screening, and the person
selling tickets warned they might not be able to sit together. She said that was
fine, bought popcorn and went in. Soon afterwards she came back out, complaining
that they couldn't sit together. She wanted a refund for the tickets (fine) and
popcorn (not fine, but she insisted). The conversation between her and my
manager escalated a bit. I don't remember who brought up the police, but she at
least was very confident that she knew her rights and the police would back her
up if they arrived. Eventually he gave her a refund.
If it had been up to me? And if I hadn't had to worry about things like PR and
"someone yelling in the lobby would ruin the experience for people watching
movies"? I think I would absolutely have used the "no, sorry, those are the
rules" move. I would have been happy to do so. Does that make me a blankface?
But it's not that I would have enjoyed wielding my power as such. Rather it's
that I would have enjoyed punishing her, specifically, for acting in ways that I
endorsedly think are bad to act in.
Does someone's internal experience mat
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