Hacker News Reader

Comment by credo | Hacker News Reader

>>"My parents divorced. No one is talking to my dad. We're not anywhere close to being healed yet and I don't know how long it will take to put the pieces back together."

We don't know the circumstances under which the father and his then-girlfriend had given up their son for adoption. However, that seems to have happened decades ago.

I'm not sure why no one is now talking to the dad for something that happened decades ago.

View on HN

I don't think you are meant to. The author is trying to write about the unexpected consequences, not put the consequences on display. It seems fairly likely that the falling out in the family would not have happened without the information provided by the genetic testing (or a similar revelation).

Perhaps he kept it as a secret all this time. Many people regard hiding such a fundamental piece of information for such a long time as a breach of trust. The interesting thing to me about the story is that a morally neutral technology can lead to bitter disagreements by unexpectedly presenting a moral dilemma.

Morally neutral technology does this all the time. Human social interactions are filled to the brim with lies of all kinds- falsehoods, fabrications, lies by omission, etc. Technology is gradually stripping them away.

And adding some others.

This is very nicely documented in an SF story about the ability to view the past Asimov?.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

My thoughts exactly. It's not like he's changed overnight because of this new information. He's the same person he always was.

Because dad cheated on his wife. The girlfriend was a mistress. * Edit: Turns out I was wrong, as indicated below.

http://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/6107039/23andme-ancestry-dna-tes...

" the child was not the result of adultery "

It's really bad that vox didn't mention this info. Nearly everyone will assume this the result of a cheating husband.

So what? Isn't that why (s)he's using a pseudonymous?

You mean nearly everyone didn't understand what they just read and the message flew right over their heads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com