It has been reported that in very advanced stages, symbolopobia shares many symptoms with rabies. This end-stage is often marked by an irrational distrust of anything technical or computational. Many different strains have been identified, each with its characteristic symptoms. Formalist vision arises from imagining oneself to be trapped in a box into which people shove little slips of paper with Chinese scribbling on them. There is perpetually nothing else to do, so the victim matches these symbols with similar symbols found in a large book, follows the rules contained therein, and then passes some other symbols out under the door.

Computers are the only machines which both manipulate symbols and are manipulated by them; they are "physical symbol systems." As we know, AI uses this insight to implement systems capable of thought. However, some people find this idea of a symbolic machine very unsettling. This tension can be a clinical precursor of a disorder called symbolophobia.