A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem | Hacker News Reader

A game theoretic approach to the toilet seat problem

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68 pointsmoeffju62 comments

Heh. My simpler solution is to just always sit (I'm a guy). It's more comfortable, requires less concentration and removes any possibility of missing.

The only time I stand is for proper urinals.

My simpler solution is to treat it like any other tool - inspect that the device is actually ready for use before using.

By moving both the seat and the lid into up and down position, checking manually for blockages, flushing water twice, and demanding to be shown latest annual inspection certificate.

And after following such a procedure pretending that the toilet seat is an airplane cockpit won't increase your embarrassment. Yay!

Yes

Except some factor may prevent the proper inspection of the seat:

- Urgency in using it

- Lighting conditions at its environment

- Possibility of evaluation impairment usually by consumption of ethanol

Considering these factors it would be prudent to have the seat at the safest position when such factors are more likely to occur

Actually, sitting does not remove the possibility of missing. I once had an unfortunate encounter with a toilet where someone had installed an elongated seat on a non-elongated bowl. This made it possible to easily and inadvertantly sit in a way that resulted in missing.

Ah, indeed. On an unfamiliar and odd toilet like that it is possible, I've also had it happen to me.

However, considering how many more things I'd splash otherwise, I find it a worthwhile tradeoff.

Agreed - and it's not the only problem. I mentioned this to my brother and he said:

   You know, I think I once wee'd in my face doing that.
   I hit some crazy angle and it just sprayed out.
   I can't remember the exact parameters but something very odd happened.

Always sit at your own risk.

Heh, I think your brother was just unlucky.

I've been sitting while peeing for most of my life and I've never sprayed myself. It does take a little practice to do it with an erection, but you have this problem if standing too.

You can still aim when you sit down. You still have free hands, don't you?

This strategy minimizes the cleaning cost as well as the seat manipulation cost.

I started sitting at home, and on any toilet I deem clean enough, since living in a house I rented that had a toilet with the worst splash back problem I've ever seen. It was impossible not to cause a gigantic mess while standing. I'll never sit on a public toilet though.

I grew up with three brothers and my mom enforced this rule because she was sick of cleaning the toilet and bathroom and four boys had been in and out all day.

At the risk of getting too graphic and personal, if I sit to pee in most residential toilets I tend to make unpleasant contact with the interior of the toilet rim. Ugh.

Take a piece of toilet paper, hang it down the risky area. Of course, this wastes some paper. You have to weight the cost of rainforest deforestation against the cost of treating you whatever walked onto you over the, um, bridge.

I only shop at places that get their paper from regular forests, not rain forests.

Wow. HN delivers. I was totally thinking "This comment will be seen as trollish, I should just skip it" (thus the throwaway account). But your plan is worth a try!

The main cost, btw, is extra showers between "bridge" events and sex-with-wife events.

Standing up is always going to be more comfortable for me. I never have a problem concentrating so never miss.

This whole problem has become a cliché. I've been married for over a year now and never once has this been an issue. Maybe it's because I pee in the sink..

I always leave the seat AND the lid down, to cause equal annoyance for everyone

I don't get why everyone doesn't do this, it's the best and most logical choice. Not to mention what's even the point of having a lid if it's never used.

Seriously, the 'toilet seat problem' is merely a side effect of the toilet lid cultural ignorance problem.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22137761 always leave the lid down. The poo spray is real.

I've always left both seat and lid down even when I lived by myself. Reduces the chance of dropping something in there and, if you don't get the cheap thin plastic ones that crack if you sit on them, you have a seat. But I'm starting to rethink this. No one ever thinks of the children in these arguments. I have a son, for him to prepare for operation #1 he has to first open the lid and then grab the seat with both hands from UNDERNEATH! The bottom of the seat is probably more contaminated than the water in the bowl especially after an operation #2 with the consistency of an operation #1. He's also been taught to put the seat and lid down after which he sometimes does before pulling his pants up and I'm starting to fear what damage might occur if he drops the heavy seat and lid.

No. Leave the seat up unless you need it. That keeps it clean.

There is a simple solution that takes care of the problem entirely and has the added benefit of increasing general cleanliness around the operation's area and avoid any possible argument: just perform #1 seated.

TheOatmeal has done a detailed pros and cons analysis on that habit, coming to the conclusion it should not be done. My apologies for not linking, but I can't access it from work.

I dug it up and it's pretty juvenile http://theoatmeal.com/comics/peeing_sitting_down

I sit to pee, just easier and it means I can take a leak at night without blinding myself with the lights.

It's pretty easy to pee standing in the dark, just stand over the toilet and aim straight down.

I'm pretty unco, I'd probably miss 50% of the time and I don't want to be cleaning up piss at 3 am.

Yes. And as an added bonus: If you're sitting, you have two hands free to read hacker news on your phone. (Pinch to zoom with one hand is damn near impossible.)

Is this really a problem? Everyone I've ever cohabitated with engaged in their own toilet seat manipulation and it was never an issue. Maybe it's a US thing.

Some men will pee on the seat — whether intentionally or not I have never figured out — if it's left down. Leaving it up maximizes cleanliness.

If you stick with the assumption that both Marsha and John aim to minimise the marital discord M, then John won't spill on the seat. So I guess the theory only addresses the subset of non-disfunctional marriages ;)

Marsha and John's guests and visitors, however, are a different matter.

Or even on the lid if it's dark.

"In our analysis we shall assume that John and Marsha perform toilet operations with the same frequency"

Yeah right ... I have a wife, two sons and two daughters and we have 4 bathrooms in the house which works out perfectly. That's one bathroom for each female and a spare one for the three males to share.

And the comments about the lid are funny. I was taught to put it down when I was growing up, but I never find one that way (don't let the dog kiss you at my house).

Sometimes, when you apply real-world numbers, a single forcing function overwhelms any other subtleties in the analysis. The analysis in this case fails to address the extraordinarily high cost of nagging John must endure when Marsha is inconvenienced N(J) as opposed to the other way around. Since N(J) = K * N(M), and K is never less than 50 IMO, strategy M will be the winner. Always.

Oddly enough, this is the second game theoretic analysis of toilet seats I've seen in my life; the first was http://www.urticator.net/essay/4/482.html which in some ways seems to be better.

Am I the only man in the world who leaves the seat up regardless of the operation undertaken?

Or place a coin near the toilet and flip it after use (and washing your hands). Use the coin to determine a new random seat position thus causing randomized nuisance for everyone.

That, or lose a coin every now and then down the drain...thus extending the problem into house finances

The cost of coin flipping is probably more than the cost of seat position transfer.

Simple: Install a random number generator and a light, connected up to the handle. When you flush, if the light goes on, put the seat in the down position, if it's off, put it in the up position.

This analysis misses a very important point - Marsha benefits from John lifting the seat since this avoids it getting dirty (assuming they take turns using the toilet and John is not a very accurate shooter).

Moreover, John is probably going to perform #1 more frequently then #2 - by a factor of 3-4? Thus, we can further stipulate that his default state should be 'seat up' and ask whether Marsha should be made to lift the seat up after she is done.

I think you need to reread the article:

1) The analysis assumes that John ensures the seat is in the up position before #1; if the seat is up he pays cost 0 and if it is down he pays cost C. Furthermore if John performes #1 with the seat down, the question of the final position of the seat is moot compared to the question of "why is John gross?"

2) The article takes the probability p of #1 for John. It notes that if p < 1/2 then Marsha's strategy is actually good, but this is clearly not the case

"Furthermore if John performes #1 with the seat down, the question of the final position of the seat is moot compared to the question of "why is John gross?"

That's precisely what I am taking issue with - an implicit assumption that lifting of the seat ONLY benefits John and HARMS Marsh. I think it's more appropriate to characterize it as bestowing equal benefit on both parties (clean seat) and equal work as well (John lifts the seat / Marsha puts it down).

"Criterion (2) seems plausible. It requires, however, that Marsha put the seat in the up position after performing a toilet operation some percentage of the time. No instance of this behaviour has ever been observed in recorded history; ergo this criterion can be ruled out."

I thought it was a pity that he skipped this one. He was otherwise really quite thorough!

My observations also hold, I have never once had evidence that a woman has raised the seat. Leaving out this possibility is on the same level as assuming that things fall downward or that the sun rises in the east.

(Honestly, though, who doesn't check the state of the seat before commencing operations? What sort of fairyland would you have to be living in?)

Of course, there's always the simple option of "simply sit down".

That'd waste more time than moving the seat does.

Not nearly as enjoyable as standing up.

Another solution is to get a dog. Marsha will realize that sitting in wet dog slobber is far worse than having to put the seat down occasionally. (At least, that's the rationale I use for leaving the seat up in my house.)

My solution is to just leave the toilet seat any which way and pay it no mind. If someone's getting bent out of shape over this sort of issue, they're squarely in the realm of first world problems.

The simplest solution is that each member of the household customize the seat to their liking before performing any actions. If you fall in and flush your intestines out, well, tough giggles.

I showed the article to my girlfriend and she suggested adding the cleaning cost to the equation... well played!

#FirstWorldProblems

Install a urinal!

But what if someone does #2 in the urinal?

Everyone is so full of simple solutions. My simple solution is to own a house with at least enough toilets for everybody so that you can have your own and don't need to share.

You must be American.

Nope, but thanks for the stereotype!

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