I want to take this essay seriously. One major weakness of consequentialist ethics is that ethical actions require a non-trivial amount predictive power from a

I want to take this essay seriously. One major weakness of consequentialist ethics is that ethical actions require a non-trivial amount predictive power from agents: Should we spoil our pants to save a drowning child? Sure. Should we wire a significant amount of money to a Nigerian prince who has informed us that he is setting up an organization to save drowning children? Probably not. Would we save baby Hitler? How could we ever accurately predict that a child will become Hitler? The interplay between prediction accuracy here is tough when it comes to giving money to homeless folks. It's entirely possible that giving money can do harm, but in other cases it could also benefit. This indeterminacy is a huge problem for consequentialists (I am one), and creating a reasonable discount rate for lack of knowledge about outcomes generated is a very important part of creating a consequentialist ethical theory. Dealing with general rules for difficult-to-predict decisions is the realm of deontology, not consequentialism.