This sort of rhetoric damages the quality we're hoping for here. Having a civil, substantive discussion about something mostly isn't compatible with advocating death for it.
I disagree, although I personally don't believe in the death penalty. He wasn't advocating vigilantism. American states that have the death penalty do so lawfully, in part as a deterrent.
Perhaps you should have asked him to clarify under what circumstances he would support the death penalty rather than admonishing him.
I don't believe in censoring opinions I don't happen to agree with. I think that is one of the ideas of the original article.
Sometimes there are borderline moderation calls, but this wasn't one. Perhaps it would be helpful to explain why.
HN is not all things. It is a site for civil, substantive discussion on topics of intellectual curiosity. A throwaway line suddenly invoking the death penalty is obviously not that—it's just talking smack on the internet. Maybe a detailed argument would have been different, but I doubt it. Pulling that rabbit out of hat is a stunt.
Not all opinions and contributions are equal. It's seductive to feel that they should be, until you realize that it isn't possible to treat all posts equally: if we did, the inflammatory, reflexive posts would win. That wouldn't just tip the balance—it would be a rout, because the people who prefer reflective, thoughtful discussion would leave. On HN we prefer reflective, thoughtful discussion. It's the rarer and more valuable species.
In a technical biological sense, no doubt all plants are equally valid. But if you want a garden you've got to pull weeds.
It sure was substantive! I'd never thought of the idea of using the death penalty as a punishment for crimes before reading it. And I certainly didn't know what his opinion was on whether a specific crime deserved death, and I was very delighted to hear it, and then imagine the punishment happen. It made me feel good.
In US law, treason is punishable by death. Abusing a government role undermines the legitimacy of gover and so is arguably treason (it isn't under current law, but some like GP believe it should be)
"undermining the legitimacy of gover [sic]" is far too squishy of a reason to execute someone. You need to prove that by killing them, society is better off than if we'd kept them in maximum security for the rest of their natural life.
I'm generally against the death penalty, but I'm definitely open to reconsidering that stance when it comes to willful and egregious nonsense like this.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12238910 and marked it off-topic.