Average Jane vs. Data: Solitaire Edition

When I was a child, my grandmother taught me to play Solitaire. It wasn't just to keep me quiet when the grownups were talking - we also enjoyed playing Double Solitaire together. So, I have always liked to play the game with regular cards and I decided I wanted a Solitaire app to play on my phone.

First of all, most of these apps have truly obnoxious ads between games. Seriously, the FTC needs to look into the shameless scams that have oozed into the casual gaming app industry because, damn. But I digress...

After several attempts, I found a nice, basic free Solitaire app that lets me play a straightforward game. 

The thing with Solitaire is that each game has two possible conclusions: win or lose. Actually, there's a third grey area of "gave up too soon because you didn't see a move you could have made" but it's basically binary. When you win, you take your minor dopamine hit and decide whether to play again. When you lose, you either start a new game or move on to something else.

But a digital app automatically collects information that you would never consider or care about in the analog game. This particular app tracks how many moves you made in the course of the game and when you win, it not only tells you how many moves it took you, but it also tells you the minimum number of moves you COULD have used to win with that configuration.

I DON'T WANT TO KNOW THAT. No one in the history of Solitaire has ever played the game to win using the smallest number of possible moves - and I don't intend to start now. But. My competitive brain sees that "look how slow you were" implication at the end of each win and it immediately undercuts the tiny moment of triumph. I hate that.

At a time when AI is poised to make many people's lives more miserable, this is a minor but annoying example of how you don't need to share all the data you have. Just because you can share information doesn't mean it's valuable or even useful. In this case, it's thoroughly unwelcome.

Comments

[Ragan]

Ugh, that's annoying. It's like a game I have that will rate my performance for a level on a three star scale and I was constantly repeating levels to get that last star! Sigh. I use Microsoft solitaire app on my android phone and may them $10 a year to take the ads away.