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Alsadius comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 14, chapter 82 - Less Wrong
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I'm saying that killing someone and then trying to feel good because you did it nicely seems incredibly hollow to me. It's the same reason why I've always thought that restrictions on classes of weapons because they kill "inhumanely" are a bit ridiculous. The difference between a really painful death and a humane one pales in comparison to the difference between living and dying, so placing more emphasis on the former than the latter is terrible preference order. The value is not literally zero, but it's smaller than the disutility Dumbledore would gain from being caught out as having faked it.
It might seem a bit hollow, but it's better than killing someone in a slow, excruciating way, and telling yourself it doesn't matter because they were going to be dead at the end of it anyway.
He's killing for a reason, and if we assume that Dumbledore isn't lost to morality(as he seems not to be), then he certainly believes that the reason justifies an innocent death. If you're paying that sort of price though, you've got a pretty serious obligation to ensure that you get what you're paying for - in this case, an end to the murder of your family and the families of your allies. If killing her nasty does a better job of that than killing her cleanly, then light up the BBQ. It's better than killing her for nothing.
Also, before I sound like too much of a psychopath, I should point out that I'm well aware of how slippery a slope this sort of argumentation is, and how incredibly careful you need to be in applying it. But war involves lots of death, and if you're paying in lives either way, you really should try to get the best price you can. It sucks, but it was the best choice open to Dumbledore in the situation, so I won't fault him for following that path.
I certainly agree that the difference between living and dying is typically much greater than the difference between being tortured for a while and not being tortured.
OTOH, situations do arise where killing X becomes necessary but torturing X remains optional. I completely agree that it's typically far far far better to avoid such situations altogether, but once I've tried and failed at that I still see no reason to torture X.
Agreed that if D's chances of being caught out are high enough, the expected cost of faking torture might well exceed the expected cost of torture. But I suspect that if we eliminated the death from the equation, and his choices were to fake her torture or to actually torture her, and he chose to torture her because the expected costs of doing so were lower, most readers (even here) would censure that choice.
But the whole point of killing Narcissa is to shock the Death Eaters. If you've gotten to the point where it seems like a good idea to murder someone for shock value, you don't do a half-assed job, you do it nasty. To do otherwise would be a waste, because if you murder her and it doesn't have the desired effect, then you did it for nothing.
There is a difference between killing someone in a messy but expedient manner, like a weapon deemed inhumane, and torturing someone to death.
1) the killer must sustain killing intent throughout the torture
2) the killer is vulnerable to counter-attack while torturing when, instead, they could be done and absent
3) the things we do change us, a torturer is likely to (almost must) become less empathetic than one who quickly executes, and empathy is a valuable skill in many activities
Most weapons deemed inhumane are the sort of thing that would be about as unpleasant as being tortured to death. The de facto ban on poison gas in WW2, for example - if I had to choose between mustard gas and napalm, I'm not sure which way I'd go. For that matter, plenty of people are burned alive in ordinary wars(naval combat is particularly bad for that, along with the aforementioned napalm), and that's never been deemed worse than any other death in any legal sense.
Also, all we know is that she was burned to death. Ordinary fire deaths are not the sort of torture you're suggesting - they're relatively quick in most cases(minutes, and not many of them), so 2) in particular doesn't apply strongly.