Greatly enjoyed Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics. Covers his positions on various political issues, including a non-crazy discussion of race and intelligence, and the ethical implications thereof. I think Singer has been recommended here before, but to reiterate: he’s a preference utilitarian consequentialist philosopher whose style and clarity of analysis is very Less-Wrong-esque, but he engages directly with the philosophical tradition. Both the meta- and object-level analysis are well worth reading.
Edit: In particular, if you’re interested in how philosophers think and talk about the orthogonality thesis and some related practical matters, his final chapter is an exceptionally lucid starting point. Singer also gets bonus coolness points there for discussion of the actual (disclaimer: 1978) research on psychopathy, and its relation to the concept of normativity.
Greatly enjoyed Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics. Covers his positions on various political issues, including a non-crazy discussion of race and intelligence, and the ethical implications thereof. I think Singer has been recommended here before, but to reiterate: he’s a preference utilitarian consequentialist philosopher whose style and clarity of analysis is very Less-Wrong-esque, but he engages directly with the philosophical tradition. Both the meta- and object-level analysis are well worth reading.
Edit: In particular, if you’re interested in how philosophers think and talk about the orthogonality thesis and some related practical matters, his final chapter is an exceptionally lucid starting point. Singer also gets bonus coolness points there for discussion of the actual (disclaimer: 1978) research on psychopathy, and its relation to the concept of normativity.