This fallacy might be useful in a debate, but it's useless in real life. It tells us to ignore basic pattern recognition in favor of treating everyone as an individual, despite our brain's hardware being incapable of effectively doing so.

There exist for everyone a hypothetical black man on a spectrum from Ice Cube in "Are We There Yet" to Ice Cube in "Straight outta Compton". If you see this hypothetical person coming towards you, you will feel uncomfortable because your reptile brain wants you keep you alive.

Everyone's lived experience is different. Everyone is entitled to a version of Ice Cube that scares them and the freedom to not associate with the people who they don't trust. Everyone is entitled to think a self-diagnosed mental disorder is disgusting and steals light from the actually afflicted.

> Everyone's lived experience is different.

Most opinions are not based on "lived experiences", but journalism and movies. They will select the pattern for you.

Sadly, yes. A lot of people consume and regurgitate manufactured opinions. Manufactured consent wouldn't work if it weren't the case. We've struggled with this problem since Plato and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future.

We still need to remind the lemming that pattern recognition isn't the boogieman that pop culture makes it out to be.