I am the deteriorated man. I really am the deteriorated man – there’s no doubt about it. A walking talking breathing deteriorated man, capable of reflecting (to a certain limited extent, at least) on his condition but not capable of actually doing anything about it. Not capable of that at all.

The little crystal quantum AIs fly in circles around my head, busily calculating the probability that this isn’t the real universe but a copy. They are in other words busily calculating the probability that they aren’t real AIs, but just virtual models of AIs in some kind of simplified format. The AI’s look to me as if they’re caught up in some kind of infinite regression which they can’t spot, trying diligently to calculate the probability of them being a simulation nested in a simulation nested in a simulation nested in a simulation which is in turn nested in a simulation of a simulation that is nested in a simulation, and so on…

I suffer from this condition called ‘collapsing categories’ – that’s what I call it anyway. I don’t know what anyone else calls it – probably they don’t call it anything. I’m actually sure that they don’t call it anything. People aren’t very good at understanding this sort of thing in my experience! It’s the type of problem they just don’t want to hear about. What happens to you when you get this condition is that your categories start to merge, with the result that you end up with less and less of them, obviously. It’s like a TV screen that keeps getting degraded so that it has less and less pixels in it to make up the picture. The end point is where you have only the one pixel and so no matter what the TV is trying to show you, it always looks the same. It doesn’t just look the same either, it IS the same – the same display for everything, eventually leaving just the one big fat stupid ugly old pixel to stand for everything…

That’s what happens to someone with the collapsing categories syndrome, only it’s affecting your mental categories rather than your pixels, obviously. Because you don’t actually have any pixels, as such. Your model or theory of the world gets progressively degraded; the nuances of it get insidiously leeched out bit by bit until there’s none left. None at all. You have a completely non-nuanced view of the world – you could be a civil servant or the minster of some evangelical church. That’s just my little joke – it’s good to hang on to some form or variant of humour if you can. However dark it may be. However unfunny it might be. I would certainly advise you to try to do that – especially if you find yourself in my situation…

So what I’m banging on about here is the fact that when you contract the collapsing categories syndrome certain key mental categories become overvalent and swallow up all the other categories, all the less aggressive ones. An overvalent category eats everything in sight – it feasts on its unfortunate neighbours and becomes fat. It becomes fat and ugly and evil. It bloats out and it no longer means what it used to mean either. It no longer means what it used to mean because by greedily subsuming too much meaning it actually becomes meaningless  – it becomes stupid, ugly and meaningless and yet it nevertheless continues to rule the roost! It absolutely insists on ruling the roost – it won’t stand for any competition. Sounds familiar? I rather think it ought to!

These are what I call ‘demon-categories’. They’re demonic because they no longer do what they’re supposed to do, because they no longer stand for what they’re supposed to stand for. They originally stood for something, in some kind of a way, before they got too greedy and tried to stand for everything. By trying to represent everything they end up representing nothing and yet they’ll never admit that! Or rather they’ll never let you know that – they won’t let you know that because they control your thinking. What am I saying, they don’t control your thinking – they ARE your thinking! The demon categories have eaten your mind like maggots eating up an apple from the inside (whilst leaving the skin intact) and this is how the disease runs its course. Eventually there’s nothing else. Eventually all that’s left is the biggest fattest greediest ugliest most bloated ‘demon category’ of all, which is you….