An Expected utility agent has some way of consistently scoring all the possible outcomes of its actions, like assigning 20 points to saving a burning orphanage. The agent weighs its actions by estimating the average expected score of an action's consequences. For example, an action with a 50% chance of leading to an outcome with utility 20, a 25% chance of leading to an outcome with utility 35, and a 25% chance of leading to an outcome with utility 45, would have an expected utility of 30. These utilities can potentially reflect any sort of morality or values - selfishness, altruism, or paperclips. Several famous mathematical theorems suggest that if you can't be viewed as some type of expected utility agent, you must be going in circles, making bad bets, or exhibiting other detrimental behaviors. Several famous experiments show that human beings do exhibit those behaviors, and can't be viewed as expected utility agents.