Too many people don't care. Just look how many people are plugging away at AI even though it could easily lead to extinction level events. Even before that people were making the H bomb and even other smaller scale weapons. Too many people are too greedy and don't care.
I just don't think this kind of opting out is going to do much. Maybe slow things down a little, but not that much.
But you're confusing the purpose of "caring". You are working under the assumption that the people who care would like to modify the situation in order to prevent these things from advancing further.
And of course, from that perspective you can make the argument that none of the proposed actions make any difference at all. Only outlawing the research itself has any chance of success for that, for obvious reasons. Now the simplest explanation is the explanation I'm afraid : if people are taking actions for reason X that don't have any effect on X at all, then perhaps there's simply another reason.
If you instead look at the reactions in this thread as "given this valid concern, how can I use it as an argument to exercise power over others ?", then you will find people's behavior surprisingly sensible.
People are discussing how to exert direct influence over how these big companies (where a lot of them work) move, and even more transparently about who should decide what. Who should decide who does things and what they're allowed to do.
I just don't think this kind of opting out is going to do much. Maybe slow things down a little, but not that much.