Am I the only one who thinks that the "ethics" part of philosophy is kind of trivial? The only part of philosophy which took me a long time to form a clear opinion on was the hard problem of consciousness and related topics.
I do think that in practice the different ethical systems don't produce wildly different outcomes, from utilitarianism to deontology to even virtue ethics. Of course, in the realm of thought experiments they can be widely different. But in the real world, the hardest thing is to be moral (i.e. do the right thing) rather than defining your ethics (having a clear code). In practice, the "evil"/conflict/strive in the world I see is due to selfishness or amorality, not disagreements between utilitarians and kantians. Is this what you're getting at? That the distinctions between the different ethical systems collapse into similar practical situations? That being a "good person" is more important than the particular ethical code you follow? (That's my take, basically).
I'll also say that I found meta-ethics incredibly illuminating. It essentially builds up a language to discuss different ethical systems and makes conversations around them way easier.
Big up on consciousness and philosophy of mind though. I also found philosophy of science fascinating. And shoutout to Hobbes! He would have loved HN, he was such a contrarian.
I absolutely agree that in the real world it's mainly about being a good person, not about being a particular type of a good person.
Is it ethical to let a coworker make a mistake you saw so they can learn, at the cost of project progress, or is it ethical to help them and make sure you deliver what was promised to your stakeholders on time? What if you don't like the co-worker? What if you dont like stakeholders?
Is it ethical to slack off at work if you need that for your mental safety? Or is it theft?
And so on. Tons of little decisions that are not about life and death, but still very much about ethics, and that are not trivial at all.