Is it OK to boil a lobster?

Short answer:
Yes, of course it is.

Long answer:
Let’s consider the life, or rather the death, of a lobster. In nature lobsters begin very small and die a million horrible deaths in a million horrible ways. As they get older the death rate drops. We have ample evidence that lobsters do not go gentle into that good night, dying peacefully in their sleep at a ripe old age. Instead, once mature, a lobster that doesn’t go into the pot might face off with cod, flounder, an eel or two, or one of many diseases.

Considering that one of the natural deaths a lobster may face is to be torn limb from limb by an eel, getting tossed into a pot of boiling water doesn’t seem quite so gruesome. But there is a big difference between death by eel and death by human, the eel is not human. And now we have hit upon the broader question that must be answered before we can understand the short answer given above: Are humans a part of nature, or apart from nature?

We have an enormous amount of evidence that humans are a part and product of the Earth. Humans are a naturally evolved species related to all other forms of life on Earth, physically shaped by the abiotic parameters of our planet, like gravity, temperature, humidity, partial pressure of atmospheric oxygen, etc., and physiologically dependant on other forms of life for essential amino acids. We are not travelers from a supernatural realm or from a distant star forced to bide our time in a foreign land before we can travel home again. We are home.

We are natural, and what we do is natural. This is our place. The cabin in the woods is just as natural as the trees that grow around it, and those trees are just as natural as cell phone towers.

We human beings, you and me, are a natural species that evolved and lives on this Earth. We have as much right to use resources and alter the Earth as any other species. We are on an equal footing with other species, not above, below, or beside. We do not have dominion over the earth as the creationists want us to believe, we are not alien invaders that should cringe at every footfall as the hippie vegans want us to believe, and despite what the conservationists say we are no more stewards of the Earth than dung beetles.

Only when we understand that will be we begin to realize that the environmental issues we face today have less to do with what is good for humans and more to do with balancing the rights of our species with the rights of the rest of life on Earth. (For what it’s worth I favor a future with taller buildings and vast swaths of the earth blessed with benign neglect.)

So yes, it is perfectly alright and natural to boil your lobster… but then again, we did naturally evolve the capacity to think that boiling lobsters might be wrong… so maybe you shouldn’t. What do I know?

Just don’t not do it for the wrong reasons.

As long as males and females have been living with indoor plumbing they have argued over the placement of the toilet seat. Most often, males leave the toilet seat up and females leave the toilet seat down. Males may not necessarily have a problem with the toilet seat down, but then females will suffer from wet bottom syndrome from time to time. If males leave the seat up, females may “fall” into the toilet particularly at night. A solution to this problem is to always leave the toilet seat in a particular position: the toilet seat remains down and males must lift the toilet seat to urinate, but then return it to its down position; alternatively, the toilet seat remains up and females must always place the seat down to use the toilet and return it to its upright position when done.

The trouble with this solution is: in which position should the toilet seat be placed? This decision has, no doubt, been the source of many arguments in male-female households. Previous scientific research has been undertaken on this household problem. Choi (2002) uses an optimization method to identify the efficient placement of the toilet seat. He finds that unless the costs of changing the toilet seat position are asymmetric across the parties involved, the optimal toilet seat placement follows the selfish rule: do not change the toilet seat position when you are finished using the toilet. Harter (2005) and Siddiqi (2006) both use game theoretic models to show that optimal toilet seat placement is up. However, Harter (2005) does note that in order to avoid marital conflict the toilet seat may best be in the down position.

In this paper, an efficiency-based argument is used to show which position the toilet seat should be in, depending on the composition of the household. This is done through a mathematical modeling approach that extends previous research by considering households with more than one male and more than one female. Because it takes effort to raise and lower the toilet seat, the toilet seat should be left in the position that minimizes the number of times it must be moved. It is shown that the optimal toilet seat placement depends on the ratio of males to females.

In order to determine the optimal toilet seat placement, a mathematical modeling approach is taken. In order to perform such modeling, a number of axioms must be made.

Axiom 1: Females always use the toilet with the seat in the down position.

Axiom 2: Males urinate with the toilet seat up in the up position and defecate with the toilet seat in the down position.

Axiom 3: Males and females defecate once per day and urinate 7 times per day.

Axiom 3 is clearly critical for the results, but in a sensitivity analysis the results presented below were shown to be robust. Considering these axioms, the toilet seat ratio is calculated as follows:

This ratio is bounded by zero and unity. If the TSR is greater than 0.50, the optimal toilet seat placement is up; if the TSR is less than 0.50, the optimal toilet seat placement is down; and if the TSR is equal to 0.50 the optimal placement is either up or down. The TSR is calculated for all combinations of 1 – 5 males and 0 – 6 females.

The results of the mathematical modeling are shown in Figure 1 and Table 1. Figure 1 also shows the 0.50 mark (grey line) and all TSR values greater than 0.50 in Table 1 are in bold.

Figure 1. Toilet Seat Ratio

Table 1. Toilet Seat Ratios, ad nauseam

The first point to notice in this analysis is that the claims of previous research have not been replicated here: when there is one female and one male in the household the optimal toilet seat placement is down. However, as evident in Table 1, all hope for having the toilet seat in the up position is not lost for males.

Overall, the general results clearly show that if the number of females is greater than or equal to the number of males the optimal placement of the toilet seat is down. Additionally, when males outnumber females, the optimal toilet seat placement is not always up: when there are four males in a household, the optimal toilet seat placement is only definitively up when there are two or fewer females; and when there are five males in a household, the optimal toilet seat placement is only definitively up when there are three or fewer females.

Through the use of mathematical modeling, the analysis in this paper has shown that the optimal placement of the toilet seat can be calculated based on the number of males relative to the number of females. The general result (that is not sensitive to reasonable changes in Axiom 3) is that when the number of females in a household is greater than or equal to the number of males the optimal placement of the toilet seat is down. Therefore, there is no longer any need for males and females to argue over the placement of their toilet seat as long as they are concerned with the efficient expenditure of household energy.

Choi, J.P. (2002). Up or down? A male economist’s manifesto on the toilet seat etiquette. Department of Economics, Michigan State University Working Paper.

Harter, R. (2005). A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem. The Science Creative Quarterly.

Siddiqi, H. (2006). The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: a game theoretic analysis. MPRA Paper No. 856.