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Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

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Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#11
post #3

Faceless corporations have aggregated psychological profiles rivaling those of psychologists on billions of people. Why shouldn't this information have the same, if not more, protections as HIPPA?

Psychology can be whatever you want to make it. If you don't want to be psychologically profiled, be an outlier and/ot be more careful about what data you divulge. The same thing happens in psychological settings. Faceless corporations and practitioners profiling people for what purpose - to sell more psychiatric medication? Or to actually help? You can't ever really tell the difference walking into those places. HIP…

The difference is it's much easier to choose not to walk into a bad psychologists office than it is to completely forsake using the internet, where nearly everywhere is overrun with advertisers tracking your every move and adding it to a psychological profile. Whether you're "giving" them your data or not, they're taking it. Suggesting the average person simply "be careful" about the data they divulge is absurd in light of advanced tracking methods such as browser fingerprinting.

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology can be whatever you want to make it. If you don't want to be psychologically profiled, be an outlier and/ot be more careful about what data you divulge. The same thing happens in psychological settings. Faceless corporations and practitioners profiling people for what purpose - to sell more psychiatric medication? Or to actually help? You can't ever really tell the difference walking into those places. HIP…

The difference is it's much easier to choose not to walk into a bad psychologists office than it is to completely forsake using the internet, where nearly everywhere is overrun with advertisers tracking your every move and adding it to a psychological profile. Whether you're "giving" them your data or not, they're taking it. Suggesting the average person simply "be careful" about the data they divulge is absurd in li…

[deleted]

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#13
Psychoinformatics... I think it just goes to show that computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method for other disciplines. Yes, you can be scientific about the tool that you're building (and measure it, test it). You can even have scientific theories about the tool that you're using (theory of computation) but to call this psychoinformatics would imply that the informatics part is scientific [1].

In my opinion it isn't. Collecting data through the use of big data methods (or whatever you want to call it) has nothing to do with science and everything to do with tool use. We never called psychology something like surveypsychology or fMRIpsychology. Why should psychoinformatics be different? Moreover, merging psychology with informatics could probably already be subsumed under artificial intelligence.

I am in favor of computational methods if applied ethically but I don't think it justifies something with a new name. Especially not if it is one of tool use since tools can change, then this field will either be stuck in old tools or have a nomenclature issue.

[1] Not to mention that computer science researchers are even debating among themselves whether the discipline is scientific.

Full disclosure: bachelor in psychology, bachelor in information science, master in computer science and master in game studies. I'd love to work at an intersection of psychology + computer science (+ games perhaps as well).

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology can be whatever you want to make it. If you don't want to be psychologically profiled, be an outlier and/ot be more careful about what data you divulge. The same thing happens in psychological settings. Faceless corporations and practitioners profiling people for what purpose - to sell more psychiatric medication? Or to actually help? You can't ever really tell the difference walking into those places. HIP…

The difference is it's much easier to choose not to walk into a bad psychologists office than it is to completely forsake using the internet, where nearly everywhere is overrun with advertisers tracking your every move and adding it to a psychological profile. Whether you're "giving" them your data or not, they're taking it. Suggesting the average person simply "be careful" about the data they divulge is absurd in li…

[deleted]

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#15
Computational psychology has became a thing around the same time targeting ads and trackers became prevalent online. You may not agree with the political opinion in this article but I think it's fascinating to read.

https://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaga...

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#16

Psychoinformatics... I think it just goes to show that computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method for other disciplines. Yes, you can be scientific about the tool that you're building (and measure it, test it). You can even have scientific theories about the tool that you're using (theory of computation) but to call this psychoinformatics would imply that the informatics part is scientific [1].…

Names are just a tool too. The debate is settled for me when I read about Norbert Wiener, Von Neumann, etc.

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#17

Psychoinformatics... I think it just goes to show that computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method for other disciplines. Yes, you can be scientific about the tool that you're building (and measure it, test it). You can even have scientific theories about the tool that you're using (theory of computation) but to call this psychoinformatics would imply that the informatics part is scientific [1].…

> computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method

Hmm. Not sure I can agree. What would you call things like the Complexity Zoo? (Computational science? Part of mathematics?)

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#18

Psychoinformatics... I think it just goes to show that computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method for other disciplines. Yes, you can be scientific about the tool that you're building (and measure it, test it). You can even have scientific theories about the tool that you're using (theory of computation) but to call this psychoinformatics would imply that the informatics part is scientific [1].…

> computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method Hmm. Not sure I can agree. What would you call things like the Complexity Zoo? (Computational science? Part of mathematics?)

It was appended with "for other disciplines"

I'm not so much talking about the field itself but more how it is used for other disciplines. Mathematics is a discipline too and has a lot of academic work behind it but using an ANOVA or a t-test isn't scientific/academic in the mathematical sense. It's just a tool. The mathematical idea of an ANOVA has already been discovered, mathematics moved on.

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#19

Psychoinformatics... I think it just goes to show that computer science is less of a science and more of a tool / method for other disciplines. Yes, you can be scientific about the tool that you're building (and measure it, test it). You can even have scientific theories about the tool that you're using (theory of computation) but to call this psychoinformatics would imply that the informatics part is scientific [1].…

Names are just a tool too. The debate is settled for me when I read about Norbert Wiener, Von Neumann, etc.

Hmm, names are tools, I agree. Could you give some sources? I'm curious.

Re: Toward Psychoinformatics: Computer Science Meets Psychology (2016)

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology can be whatever you want to make it. If you don't want to be psychologically profiled, be an outlier and/ot be more careful about what data you divulge. The same thing happens in psychological settings. Faceless corporations and practitioners profiling people for what purpose - to sell more psychiatric medication? Or to actually help? You can't ever really tell the difference walking into those places. HIP…

The difference is it's much easier to choose not to walk into a bad psychologists office than it is to completely forsake using the internet, where nearly everywhere is overrun with advertisers tracking your every move and adding it to a psychological profile. Whether you're "giving" them your data or not, they're taking it. Suggesting the average person simply "be careful" about the data they divulge is absurd in li…

> The difference is it's much easier to choose not to walk into a bad psychologists office than it is to completely forsake using the internet

I can't agree with this. Abstractly it's the same problem. Requires knowing information you don't have, before you have it.

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