The future of ammonia use in 30 years: a deliberative experimental study envisioning the perspective of a future generation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Non-technical summary Humans are currently grappling with the challenge of nitrogen (N) management, which involves a multidimensional trade-off between the benefits of N use and the consequences of N pollution. For this study, a deliberative experiment was conducted in which five N scientists, divided into two groups, envisioned the future of NH 3 use in the 2050s, adopting the perspective of an imaginary future generation. Through this experience, the study encourages scientists to adopt the proposed framework and embrace freedom to explore desirable future visions, in addition to their usual task of empirically establishing universal disciplinary knowledge. Technical summary Humans are currently grappling with the challenge of nitrogen (N) management, which involves a multidimensional trade-off between the benefits of N use and the consequences of N pollution. The urgency to address this issue is already pronounced and may escalate further due to the emergence of ammonia (NH 3 ) as a carbon-free energy resource. For this study, a deliberative experiment was conducted in which five N scientists, divided into two groups, envisioned the future of NH 3 use in the 2050s, adopting the perspective of an imaginary future generation. The study revealed that some scientists encountered what is referred to in this study as the ‘positivist gap’, which involves difficulties forming narratives about unpredictable futures that rely on arbitrary assumptions. From this experience, this study develops and illustrates a framework that incorporates (i) Future Design workshops and (ii) abstracting operation for the workshop outputs. Although conducted in Japan, this study aims to inspire similar research in other countries. Social media summary A visioning experiment showed how scientists handle nitrogen trade-offs, imagining NH₃’s roles in a complex 2050 world.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.045 | 0.052 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.015 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".