The replies indicator serves three purposes:
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It shows how many people replied to a specific post – to give the post author and anyone reading, some clue how popular this post was as a reply target. If 10 people replied to a specific post.. that post was significant.
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It offers a “sneak preview” of replies to just that post, without going to the trouble of scrolling down and reading every reply in sequence (including other sequential replies that may have nothing to do with that post). You could complain that this is like watching movie trailers that spoil the best plot points and jokes of the full movie, yes, but my answer to that is simple: don’t watch the movie trailer
e.g. don’t click on the button if you don’t want the sneak preview. -
When expanded, you can also click or tap the arrow to jump down in the stream to that reply, if you want to use it as a navigational tool to monkey-bars swing your way down a topic. (For symmetry, this also works going upwards, if you click or tap on the in-reply-to indicator at the top of a post).
Discourse is mostly a flat discussion system, but it has some hybrid elements – this is one of those hybrid elements. If your community just can’t stop themselves from watching trailers for movies they plan to see clicking or tapping the replies button, simply hide it through CSS as @notriddle and @awesomerobot proposed in earlier replies.
Done.. and done.