Is it bad to not want to do something only because public opinion says not to?
I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness.
But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it.
Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows.
In terms of the discussion about it being a neutral thing, some points:
1. Elon Musk is afraid of AI for the reasons of the paperclip apocalypse problem. You would make something and it would consume all of the resource due to it understanding its need to self replicate and not the fact that its use of resources meant a lack of resources for everyone else and potentially the destruction of the society consuming the paperclips.
2. Elon Musk makes the worlds most famous line of environmentally friendly cars. It is believed he does this, or at least he attempts to sell them on the basis of, being environmentally friendly and saving the planet.
3. Elon Musk also then invests hugely in a decentralised currency that, by design, if it becomes popular, will use all available resources at the exclusion of any other ideology, due to it's decentralised design - including saving the climate, etc - so because energy production by and large destroys the climate, it will destroy the climate.
You can say this is a neutral choice, but mostly it just seems like a really dumb or contradictory choice. He (Elon) may well believe decentralised currencies are the future - he has also stated that as soon as a rampant unchecked production mechanism gets free, we are doomed. The apparent inability to connect the two is what I find so striking.
I think if you think it is bad, then that implies a certain world view about absolute good and evil. The implication is that this is an evil thing, and only an evil person would want to do it, and so if the only reason they won’t do it is because of public opinion then that doesn’t change their inherent evilness.
But the other possibility is that the person making the decision believes it’s a good thing, or at worst a neutral thing, but are not willing to pay the cost once they find out how badly everyone reacted to it.
Maybe Musk thinks decentralised money is more important than the setback to climate change? Maybe musk thinks that crypto will become green over time and it won’t matter? Or maybe he just wanted to do a pump and dump. There are all sorts of things musk can think, who knows.
But either way, people got what they wanted.