We are literally talking about the thing that makes them similar. You are being punished because you could have done something wrong, not because you did something wrong.
> You are being punished because you could have done something wrong, not because you did something wrong.
No, with drunk driving, getting behind the wheel IS wrong, regardless of the outcome. If someone plays Russian roulette, and they live, do you just go, "oh, no big deal, I'm not going to be upset about something that could have happened"? No, you judge every decision based not in hindsight, but based on what is known at the time. Driving while impaired is wrong, full stop. If you repeat the drunk driving experiment 100s of times, you'll see accidents more often than sober driving, but you shouldn't just punish those who get into the accidents, since they've made the exact same decision as those who are lucky and happened not to.
In the "loading the web page" case, it's like getting made at someone for pulling the trigger of a known empty gun because it "could have" instead been a gun that had bullets in it. If the kid loads the webpage 100s of times it will always be the same web page, with no issue. It's not like sometimes it will be a page with a virus on it. So in that case getting in trouble for "what you could have done" doesn't make any sense.
IOW, you shouldn't punish people based on "what they could have done", but you should punish people based on "what could have happened".
> You are being punished because you could have done something wrong, not because you did something wrong.
No, with drunk driving, getting behind the wheel IS wrong, regardless of the outcome. If someone plays Russian roulette, and they live, do you just go, "oh, no big deal, I'm not going to be upset about something that could have happened"? No, you judge every decision based not in hindsight, but based on what is known at the time. Driving while impaired is wrong, full stop. If you repeat the drunk driving experiment 100s of times, you'll see accidents more often than sober driving, but you shouldn't just punish those who get into the accidents, since they've made the exact same decision as those who are lucky and happened not to.
In the "loading the web page" case, it's like getting made at someone for pulling the trigger of a known empty gun because it "could have" instead been a gun that had bullets in it. If the kid loads the webpage 100s of times it will always be the same web page, with no issue. It's not like sometimes it will be a page with a virus on it. So in that case getting in trouble for "what you could have done" doesn't make any sense.
IOW, you shouldn't punish people based on "what they could have done", but you should punish people based on "what could have happened".