Utility Function Quotes & Sayings

I wept more in Korea than in all the past several years put together. These experiences changed my life. I could never be quite the same again ... I felt sadder, older. I felt as though I had gone in a boy and come out a man. — Billy Graham

It is better that great peoples should seek out glory, or even vanity, in their deeds, than that they should remain indifferent . For even if they are not incited to act upon virtuous principles, at least there is the saving grace that they will do things they might not have done had not vanity prompted their actions. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Human individuals and human organizations typically have preferences over resources that are not well represented by an "unbounded aggregative utility function". A human will typically not wager all her capital for a fifty-fifty chance of doubling it. A state will typically not risk losing all its territory for a ten percent chance of a tenfold expansion. [T]he same need not hold for AIs. An AI might therefore be more likely to pursue a risky course of action that has some chance of giving it control of the world. — Nick Bostrom

I have often wondered that learning is not thought a proper ingredient in the education of a woman of quality or fortune. Since they have the same improvable minds as the male part of their species. — Joseph Addison

There is more to joy than looking only for affirmation; refusing to be challenged is the only bigotry. — Criss Jami

Necessary policemen, firemen, street cleaners, health officers, judges, legislators and executives perform productive services as important as those of anyone in private industry. They make it possible for private industry to function in an atmosphere of law, order, freedom and peace. But their justification consists in the utility of their services. It does not consist in the "purchasing power" they possess by virtue of being on the public payroll. — Henry Hazlitt

Along with a dozen other students I had dissected a human cadaver and sorted its contents by size, color, function, and weight. There was nothing pleasant about the experience. Its only consolation was its truth and its only virtue was its utility. — Robert Charles Wilson

We all grew up in that era. I'm a little younger than these guys [Will Forte and John Solomon], but I would say all of us are huge fans of the original "MacGyver" series, and obviously we found that inspiration for the original pitch for MacGruber. We took his name and made it stupid. In terms of the inspiration for the movie, that really came from our love for late '80s/early '90s action movies - the whole "Lethal Weapon" series and "Rambo" and "Die Hard," every single [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and [Sylvester] Stallone film. — Will Forte

For our purposes, let's say a goal is a specific objective that you either achieve or don't sometime in the future. A system is something you do on a regular basis that increases your odds of happiness in the long run. If you do something every day, it's a system. If you're waiting to achieve it someday in the future, it's a goal. — Scott Adams

The way you confront an organization like that is twofold. No. 1, you kill their militants. There is no room for discussion or negotiation when it comes to an ISIS or an Al Qaeda militant. They don't want anything concrete. And if you want nothing that's measurable or concrete, there is nothing to talk about. You must be destroyed. — Reza Aslan

Jake Robert's wife is real ugly, but according to him that's nothing a six pack and a light switch can't fix. — Jerry Lawler

Several medical professional organizations acknowledge the utility of opioid therapy and many case series and large surveys report satisfactory reductions in pain, improvement in function and minimal risk of addiction. — Andrew Rosenblum

The basis of the free market is anytime you can generate revenue or profit, you've created value in excess of the resources you consume in a society. That's probably the most unbiased utility function there is, as opposed to someone's opinion. — Michael J. Saylor

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

This is the saddest place on Earth," I say.
"Take it from a rat, kid
there are lots of saddest places on Earth. — Chris Lynch

That man is a reality, mankind an abstraction; that men cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations; that the end justifies the means only within very narrow limits; that ethics is not a function of social utility, and charity not a petty bourgeois sentiment but the gravitational force which keeps civilization in its orbit. — Arthur Koestler

One had to speak of sex; one had to speak publicly and in a manner that was not determined by the division between licit and illicit, even if the speaker maintained the distinction for himself (which is what these solemn and preliminary declarations were intended to show): one had to speak of it as of a thing to be not simply condemned or tolerated but managed, inserted into systems of utility, regulated for the greater good of all, made to function according to an optimum. Sex was not something one simply judged; it was a thing one administered. — Michel Foucault

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life. — Martin Luther King Jr.

In cultivating human values, emphasis should also be placed on avoiding wastage of money, food and time. — Sathya Sai Baba

Whenever you play dance music, it serves a function. It becomes a utility; you have to worry about the tempos and what you're going to play for people. But when you're playing for listening, you're free. — Stan Kenton