but over the lifetime of the agent so let's assume the agent lives for M times that was there it dies in sort of hundred years sharp that's just you know the simples model to explain so it looks at the future reward some and ask what is my action sequence or actually more precisely my policy which leads in expectation because of the know the world to the maximum reward some let me give you an analogy in chess for instance we know how to play optimally in theory it's just a minimax strategy I play the move which seems best to me