Why do they fail if they fork?
Seems to me the fanboys who buy anything that sounds good, don't really care about whether it is decentralized, because we were writing for months in the Ethereum Paradox thread that Casper would be moving it towards centralization. They only believe what they want to believe.
So why would recovering the funds for the fanboys be worse than not from the perspective of sustaining Ethereum?
All about fungibility and centralization. It sucks, and I don't think anyone could honestly argue that the attacker
deserves the coins, but intervening would be disastrous to the long term prospects of ETH. There's plenty of precedent to suggest that intervention like this would be a death sentence. The "fanboys" wouldn't care, but as far as long term adoption and all that goes, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Those in it for the quick money are no doubt pissed off, but anyone in it for the long haul should be staunchly against a fork.