Aha! Thanks to Oldcat's post about Prototaph, I found Thinking Machine, published by Raintree Publishers, which was in a different book in the series put out by that publisher, which led me to Tomorrow's TV.
The story is A Scientific Fact by Joe Haldeman II. The catatonia consists of the person endlessly repeating the last word they'd said, and starts with a radio jockey who'd locked himself in the studio, with people initially thinking it was a prank that he kept repeating "hit" over and over again.
For the other stories, it was indeed Prototaph for the one about the insurance policy, Wapshot's Demon for the Maxwell's Demon bit. It actually gives answers to "yes or no" questions. Man of Distinction was in the same anthology as Wapshot's Demon, Wild Inventions.
Man, those were some quality books... I'm going to have to look them up again when I get home.
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