"beyond any sort of improvisational rock boundaries that type 2 encompassed"

Type 2 doesn't have any boundaries or stylistic signifiers. I feel like this is what trips people up when discussing the "Types" of jamming. Type 2 simply means that the jam no longer resembles the song it sprung forth from. Various attempts to classify the funk, and later- the ambient jamming as a seperate type sprung forth from people wanting to express that a song had left it's typical structure but had gone into a general style of jamming that Phish was doing in a lot of songs during those periods. That way, people would know that while a specific Halley's Comet funk jam is far enough from typical that it wouldn't be "Type I" it also wasn't going into unexplored realms. I understand the purpose of either definition of "Type III" but they don't fall into the continuum with "Type I" and "Type II" due to the stylistic boundaries placed on "Type III" - Type I isn't just a rocking guitar solo, Type II isn't just a space jam. When it comes down to it, it's about context, not content.

More and more, you see people referring to any spacey jam as "Type II" no matter what song it comes out of. Simple jams sound like a lot of "Type II" from other songs, but since thats what Simple jams typically sound like, it is a Type I jam in Simple.

If the same jam came from a Fluffhead outro or in the middle of Julius, it would be unequivocally "Type II". Likewise, a rollicking Chalkdust-esque jam emerging from the effervescence in the middle of Foam would be "Type II" beyond a shadow of a doubt, no matter how "normal" the music sounds.

Obviously, there are grey areas. Such as the 7/31/99 Simple which spaces out as per usual but then returns to a massive peaking ending which still sounds like Simple. While related to the structure of the song, it is also extremely atypical for a 99 Simple to get loud at the end. I'd still call it Type I, but i know plenty would disagree. Then again, plenty would disagree that a Character Zero style "standard" rock jam coming in the middle of Roggae be classfied as Type II simply because they don't think it is "weird" enough to be Type II.. But again, those people are wrong