"Ethics has nothing to do with how an action is perceived" "...considering the ethical implications of that action"

Are these two not contradictions?

And is it not the too big of a load on an actor to think about everything before acting? I would prefer to delegate this function to my empathy part of the brain...

At the end i think ethics is valid only for cases where empathy is functioning. You can not be ethical to a rock unless you feel empathy for it. Same probably would go for extra strange extraterrestrial life forms that you could not empathise with. Lets say hive of microbes that makes the hive sentient but no limbs, no shared communication signals, different size categories (planetary hive)