I have to admit I didn't quite follow John's comparison between Solitaire wins and interesting voice cards. However, I didn't quite follow your argument against it either.

Of course it would be difficult to compare the interest level of voice cards to that of either day-to-day real life events or a work of fiction. If fiction, as I see it, is the compressed and focused version of real life experiences, then voice cards lie somewhere along the plane between the two. They're not entirely invented and they're not about every little thing that happens to us but they are generally focused in some way (except for some of mine) on things that have happened to us or that we've thought about, or whatever.

Maybe your objection is in the use of the term "really interesting." What different people find interesting is so subjective. If John had said "memorable" instead, would the concept have been less objectionable? Or if he had omitted the 10% quantifier?

We all have limitations on what is going to stand out to us from our own experience and from what we read. There's only a certain amount that we're capable of assessing as significant somehow and actually retaining. It makes me wonder if the level of this doesn't hover somewhere around the 10% range and if perhaps John really isn't onto something in his mysterious correlation between the level of "wins" in a game and the "wins" of what we actually have the capacity to focus on and allow to make an impression upon us in other realms.