I hesitate to call consequentialism trivial
I just meant I accept the consequentialist idea in decision theory that we should maximize, e.g. pick the best out of alternatives. But said in this way, it's a trivial point. I reject more general varieties of consequentialism (for reasons that are not important right now, but basically I think a lot of weird conclusions of consequentialism are due to modeling problems, e.g. the set up that makes consequentialism work doesn't apply well).
normal things are normal and weird things are weird
I don't know what you are saying here. Can you taboo "weird?" Newcomb is weird for CDT because it explicitly violates an assumption CDT is using. The answer here is to go meta and think about a family of decision theories of which CDT is one, indexed by their assumption sets.
I just meant I accept the consequentialist idea in decision theory that we should maximize, e.g. pick the best out of alternatives. But said in this way, it's a trivial point.
I understood and agree with that statement of consequentialism in decision theory--what I disagree with is that it's trivial that maximization is the right approach to take! For many situations, a reflexive agent that does not actively simulate the future or consider alternatives performs better than a contemplative agent that does simulate the future and considerate alternatives, ...
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