[ExI] 1950 census, was: RE: tennis

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com> 



>...I sometimes comment that I learned something I wish I didn't know.  Does anyone here have a good example of finding out something you really wish you didn't know?  I don't.  I have learned some disturbing things, but I would rather be disturbed than ignorant.  So... while respecting others' privacy, I am good with the 72 year delay on census records.

spike 





I have a related question to the above about cognitive dissonance and learning something you wish you didn't know.

In my quirky hobby of DNA-based genealogy, I sometimes learn things that are disturbing about my own family which I intentionally withhold from the rest of the family.  This is a question even more loaded with moral and ethical ambiguity, the kind of problem at which I do not do well: if it can't be modeled with a system of simultaneous differential equations, good chance I can't solve it.  I don't do ethical dilemmas.  This is why I didn't go to medical school and I am so glad I didn't.  I have withheld some biiiiig stuff from my own family and continue to do so.  

Note the above comment assumes the questionable position that one does not do wrong by doing nothing.  It's the train switch dilemma where you choose to do nothing and five are slain rather than switch the tracks and sacrifice a different three.  Maybe.

Another good example: thru DNA genealogy, I discovered that one of my adopted third cousins was sired by her great grandfather (her great grandfather met a teenage girl who was a squatter on his land, his son never confessed that he had met a squatter on the same land 19 years previously and had sired a daughter, who the old man later met and sired two before he married her and sired five more.  The father and great grandfather were the same man.  I never told my adopted cousin that information, even though it might be medically relevant.  It's a moral dilemma which almost made me give up DNA genealogy when I was first starting.

Question please: if you find out something (legitimately) which you realize is relevant but perhaps disturbing to someone else, do you withhold or tell?  First think about a related question: is there information you wish you didn't know?  So if you want to know, but are willing to withhold relevant true information from someone else, does not that violate the golden rule?  Looks to me like an exception to the golden rule, which is ordinarily a solid ethical guide.

If you ponder the father = great grandfather dilemma, I have an even thornier one for you, also related to DNA genealogy.

spike