I have to wonder how much of this thread is just stereotypically sheltered programmers not realizing that you can have consensual sex without any rigmarole, and that many women are actually looking for it if you're a cool guy that they like, even if they pick you as the house they want to sleep in while traveling, which in my experience often involves some beers with the host.

One clue is that it's just focused on men flirting with women that's inappropriate here.

All I can gather is that some HNers need to find a new way to low-key flirt with people that doesn't make them(self) think "oh, this must be sexual harassment, this is bad".

I think people are just pointing out there’s a distinction between:

1) hosting someone with no expectations, hitting it off and consensually getting together

2) hosting someone with the uncommunicated expectation they will sleep with you and pressuring someone alone in your house in a strange country until they consent.

People are cool with 1 and not with 2.

The programmers brain easily gets stuck on a thought loop similar to the _categorical imperative_; in which if something is true, it must be applicable in _all_ circumstances.

Human life however is not an infinite array of possibilities, but stay in very specific zones for most of the time.

Think about it; exponential behavior would propably be deemed bad for most things out there in code, but if you knew the iterations never peaked above 3, it doesen't apply. Much like in real life, you have concrete real values that never really change, unlike the abstract unknowable problems you're used to dealing with.