>In fact, it s documented that groups of 2-3 men, throughout world tribes, routinely killed and still kill those excessively violent individuals -- that gut reaction is what has helped us survive as a species.

that's just a political swing away from turning majorly corrupt.

one major difference between modern society and tribalistic societies is the idea of checks and balances.

tl;dr : what happens when that group of 2-3 men disagrees with you in some superficial manner, and that disagreement prompts their 'gut reaction' for murder?

It's corrupt as soon as politics enters in the least. Since the idea of permanently disfiguring someone is all about how we want other people to mistreat them for the rest of their lives, this horrific branding idea is all politics. If anything it's a slur against the admittedly noble idea of humans banding together with their neighbors to commit violence in the common defense. That violence is done quietly, in secret, or else it is a lynch mob, which is very political.

When 2-3 men individually decide who is too dangerous, they are the checks and balances! Checks and balances are a naturally occurring phenomenon when a society is composed of individuals who are capable to look after their own interest but have some dependency on others. It's only the "civilized" world that loses this as everyone becomes subservient to the Government or the lovla Dictator and checks and balances are needed to be artificially reintroduced.

There's a less extreme analog that is fairly widely accepted: "intolerant of intolerance."

Though hyperbole is rarely accepted on HN and the OP might just be trolling, in some cultures this type of over-the-top musing is equivalent (when in that cultural context) to saying "intolerant of intolerance" and shouldn't always be taken literally.

Mean words on the internet are rather different from violence, one would think.

Er... they're suggesting that we brand sociopaths and basically ends it at that. I'll pass on a world where having a bad day could lead to enforced disfigurement.

I'm not agreeing with the pro-branding-person, but let's not make the mistake of conflating a bad day and diagnosable sociopathies.

Fair, but this sort of scenario wouldn't exactly exist in isolation right? Would a society that is willing to physically brand people with a permanent "STAY AWAY" marker be super tight in their regulation of diagnosis? lol. This conversation is insane.