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Nick_Roy comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 9 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Something I just noticed from Ch. 55:
Amelia Bones: "Someone would burn for this."
Did Amelia Bones burn Narcissa Malfoy?
Actually, I just had a chilling realization in regards to that. From chapter 62:
'"No," said the old wizard's voice. "I do not think so. The Death Eaters learned, toward the end of the war, not to attack the Order's families. And if Voldemort is now acting without his former companions, he still knows that it is I who make the decisions for now, and he knows that I would give him nothing for any threat to your family. I have taught him that I do not give in to blackmail, and so he will not try."
Harry turned back then, and saw a coldness on the old wizard's face to match the shift in his voice, Dumbledore's blue eyes grown hard as steel behind the glasses, it didn't match the person but it matched the formal black robes.'
I strongly suspect that Dumbledore burned Narcissa Malfoy so that the death eaters would stop targeting the families of Order members. Judging by his tone of voice and body language in this excerpt, this is probably the one action during the war that Dumbledore most regrets having had to do.
If I'm right, Harry will be in a difficult moral situation when he learns the truth. Was what Dumbledore did justified? On the one hand, torturing a mostly innocent person to death is deplorable no matter how you slice it. On the other, if that was the only way to stop many other innocents from being tortured to death...
Another thought which occurred, is that Amelia Bones killed Narcissa in revenge for the Death Eater's killing of her family members, then Dumbledore claimed responsibility in order to send a message to the Death Eater's and Malfoy to discourage further attacks on the Order's families, and prevent Lucius from finding any evidence of Amelia's responsibility, which might have allowed him to remove one of Dumbledore's more powerful allies. He probably would have had to have been careful to give the impression that he would be willing to do so 'again' to the other Death Eaters if he wanted them to stop, though, unless Lucius cares a lot more about his allies than shown so far, or at least made some threat against Draco, who Lucius seems to care about.
EDIT: I was wondering how killing Lucius' wife would provide leverage over the other Death Eaters when I realised something rather obvious in retrospect, Dumbledore is the Headmaster of Hogwarts. He already has plenty of leverage, doesn't he? If need be he can hold all the school age children of Death Eaters and their allies hostage, or expell them, denying them good education and potentially giving them a bad reputation. If the parents withdrew the children and sent them abroad though, they could grow up without the knowledge of local politics provided by a hogwarts education (including personal knowledge of everyone important in your age group, which in such a small society, not-having would likely be a big disadvantage.)
Ah, good point. Using someone else's moral lapses to his advantage without getting his own hands dirty would be very much in character for MoR Dumbledore.
Either way, I suspect that Harry and Draco's attempt to uncover the truth, and Harry having to consider Dumbledore's position at the time, will be a major story arc at some point.
I'd imagine that the Death Eater's own activities would be brought into the lime-light as well, if it were a major arc.
Yes, especially considering that Harry already started to do this (when he made Draco admit that the death of Lily Potter was "sad"). When Draco learns that his father burned several other innocent women to death before Dumbledore/Bones returned the favor, he and Harry will both find themselves in difficult moral situations.
How so? (Hint: in Harry's opinion, the moral response to burning several innocent women to death does not involve burning more innocent women to death.) In this case, the only difficulty on Harry's part would be explaining to Susan why he annihilated her aunt.
Edit: Okay, I've read over the thread again and I honestly have no idea what the downvote is for. Please explain?
Edit: Clarified in whose opinion that was the case.
Depends, it may very well make sense from a TDT/UDT point of view.
Really, that's what people are objecting to? For goodness' sake, I'm not a deontologist or anything, I'm just referring to what was described as "condition three":
It wouldn't be a difficult moral situation on Harry's part because he specifically thought of this exact circumstance in advance.
Until he finds a person who he would describe as good but had legitimate reasons to torture someone? The situation would be contrived, but it's still possible.
I can't remember whether it was Dumbledore specifically who was named in that pledge, making it invalid if someone else did it (technically, at least, Draco would probably consider it a betrayal if Harry found out who did it but didn't help him get revenge) but if Amelia did it, then Hermione could be dragged into the situation as well, as a friend of Susan's, and we could have a fascinating obligation tug-of-war for Harry.
This may indicate that Harry has not through the relevant issues enough to appreciate this sort of moral dilemma. That said, this is a good demonstration of a possible failure mode of TDT/UDT-like approaches where they might end up leading to something that looks like cycles of revenge which they have precommitted themselves to.
The timing seems to line up - the period of seventeen months between Draco's birth and the Dark Lord's defeat works well as "toward the end of the war," and Draco never speaks of his mother as though he had any direct memory of her - except...
The problem is that Draco's description of the sequence of events doesn't seem to leave room for the Dark Lord still being corporeal at the time.
That doesn't really sound like it happened in a state of open war, does it?
So if it happened shortly after the end of the war, it probably isn't what Dumbledore is referring to there.
No. But it doesn't have to. If we stipulate instead that Dumbledore was untouchable during the actual war for practical reasons (say, being one of the most powerful wizards alive and the de-facto commander of an opposing force, hence well protected), Lucius is left with excellent reasons to go after him through legal channels after the war's over. Neither side seems to have been operating with the full blessing of the legal government, and terror tactics resulting in the deaths of innocents are exactly the kind of thing that a Ministry-run truth and reconciliation commission should be interested in.
It probably wouldn't have started out that way, but your wife's murder isn't the kind of thing you just forget after a ceasefire gets signed. Given Draco's age, the later, legal stages of the feud would be what he'd remember, and thus what he'd convey to Harry.
To me, it's more like... if this happened while Voldemort was hanging around, why would anyone, even the Death Eaters, have to take Lucius' word for anything? Sure, he can't take Veritaserum cause he's an Occlumens, but even if the Dark Mark can't compel truthfulness there's still the issue of uber-magic forensic techniques.
And it's important to note that it's not "a ceasefire gets signed", but rather 'Lucius barely squeaks out of a life sentence through copious bribery'. It seems like one way or another Lucius had to wait quite some time after war's end to level these wild charges at Dumbledore, as doing so from the defendant's stand would seem a rather pathetic attempt at misdirection. In other words, I highly doubt that "a Ministry-run truth and reconciliation commission" was involved at any stage of the process.
The theory I've been going with for a long time is that Dumbledore killed Narcissa accidentally while disposing of Tom Riddle's diary - he thought the house was empty and used Fiendfyre - and then later rationalized her death for the reasons you gave above.
There's been previous discussion about that here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2nm/harry_potter_and_the_methods_of_rationality/2pc3
It's an obvious flaw in Harry's promise, not to check that the killing was deliberate.
Aha - and here I'd misremembered that I came up with that on my own.
Oh yeah, that was you! Well, I've done that.
Interesting theory. Though one wonders why Dumbledore didn't just grab the diary and bring it to a safe location before destroying it.
Maybe there was some kind of alarm that would have instantly summoned Lucius if it was taken out of the house? Then again, if you had an alarm system, you'd think someone casting the most destructive spell known to the modern world inside your house would also trip it...
Harry only promised that if he found out who did it he would take them as his enemy. Bad things don't happen to Harry's enemies, weird things happen to Harry's enemies. I don't think Harry will have any moral qualms about making weird things happen to Dumbledore.
We've never actually seen Harry deal with a real, deadly enemy before. When he pledges to take someone as his enemy, in the formal way he did when Malfoy told him about Narcissa, I think what he's talking about goes beyond the level of schoolyard bullies and annoying reporters.