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).

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.

The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal is a good source on Von Neumann, Wiener, Licklider, and more. The book makes computing look like a science.

The names comment is from me. I wish they'd replace "Artificial Intelligence" with "Algorithms++", for example. Either way though, it's not so much the name that matters, unless it's a terrible name... loop.

> 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

There's way more to computation and psychology than just machine learning and big data. Those just happen to be trending presently.

> 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.

Well, it seems to me, that Psychoinformatics is surely going to be established. In practice, facebook, google, etc. are working on it allready since years and with great ressources. It just has not been called that, as far as I know.

But what they describe, collecting data 24/7 and analyzing it with psychological methods - is allready beeing done. It is just not done out of medical or scientific reasons ... and thats the problem with me.

So it was actually a scary read to me. I mean, there is no doubt about, that you get much better results, if you have more and better data.

And under certain condition I might be willing to share all my data for a science project or my psychotherapeut. (if I would counsel one)

And the research will surely benefit the latter as well - but I believe, most of the use cases will be for - advertisement on the one hand and population surveilance/control on the other hand.

I live in the former DDR. And the old ones still tell how horrible the spying of the Stasi was. Yet they are all fine (or don't understand) how much more is known about them today. There is a difference, sure, you don't go to prison today, if you criticize the government. But if the system goes into dark mode again - and there are some signs that this might happen - then any opposition to it, won't stand any chance. And then hello to totalitarian dystopie.

Using psychology on data collected 24/7 can also have a positive effect. We (researchers from the Menthal project + psychologists) are planning to run this project in the following months: http://www.pi.uni-tuebingen.de/arbeitsbereiche/klinische-psy...

Extra info here: https://www.startnext.com/whatsapp-against-depression

We plan to detect early signs of depression in children and teenagers.

(I'm sorry that everything is in German.)

I believe I said that as well ... of course it is good for medical or scientific reasons to have more and better data. And I don't see any problem with that, when the patients know and consent about the surveilance. So go on with that and good luck ...

Yes, you did. I was just providing an example. Thank you!

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.

HIPPA can protect you from how people outside of psychology will use that information, but it can't protect you if the practitioners of pyschology don't actually have your best interest aligned with their best interest.

This problem is a revolving door. It could be bad to get more eyeballs on it, but it could also be a good thing. The point is, that's uncertain.

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.

> 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.

Can't you read reviews about a psychologist on the internet before you decide whether or not to go into their office?

I don't know if I can explain why a review from a patient isn't information that reduces the problem space. To me, it offloads the complexity of the initial problem to another constructed variant.

As analogy, suppose I tell you to only focus on information coming from other corporations about 'big data' and what these organizations are going to do with your data. From that, derive whether their security practices are held at a high standard.

You can't know these things until things proving to the contrary happen. Likewise, I can't know whether my personal experience in a psychologist office is going to be similar or different from another patient - yielding the same results (what is the goal?). Every single statement spoken in the office of a mental health care professional - all of these things matter to the psychologist, and I am aware of that (psychology can't cure neurosis because psychology is neurotic). Every single behavioral mannerism, every quirk, every habit. All 'data' collected, to yield diagnosis. The psychologist themselves might reason themselves out of that belief by telling themselves 'I ignore it, I validate my theories against the science' but the science is mutable because the mind has no set definition that is 'valid' and 'correct' with respect to a standard. They are not God - they do not have omniscience on the definition of mental wellness, mental clarity. I've had counselors tell me it's weird that my 'grounding' techniques are thinking about reality and math. They are not programmers, computer scientists, mathematicians!

It's the same as you worrying about every single statement or bit of information you divulge on the internet. Could be worried about all of it, could shrug it all off. Could go into a psychologist's office and not worry about any of that. Won't, because it fundamentally conflicts with my core values, self identity, principles, beliefs - things I need for my mental health, sanity, security, things that keep my future stable and under my control (being able to reason correctly with respect to code). Conflating all of that with a neurotic obsession over the functioning of my mind? Just as bad, if not worse, as having shit security with data. Data can't predict the future. It's a choice to trick oneself into that belief. That's the problem with these organizations that yields mental peace. Collect all the data they want! It controls their minds more than it controls mine.

If you want to find out more about the project that sparked this paper you can find it here https://menthal.org/

I'm one of the researchers that works on the project.

Any relation to computational cognitive science?

In my opinion, psychoinformatics is just that. Now we have better tools for data collection and analysis plus outside knowledge from computer science. When we talk to psychologists, they have ideas that have been there for a long time but they did not know how to actually run these experiments. We bring a large scale view into their field. They are usually overwhelmed and we need to guide them extensively. (I've had to specifically craft dataframes into SPSS data file formats in a specific order for them to actually be able to work with.)

You'll see that definitions have evolved over time. Each new wave has a new vision based on the latest research trends and tools.

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...