Scientific Problem Solving with Psychedelics—James Fadiman

James Fadiman will describe how to best use psychoactive materials for enhanced problem solving, a poorly understood and under-researched area. However, there are established methods that open minds to useful solutions for real problems. He will share his personal experience as part of a group that established the basic guidelines: set and setting, substance and dosage, as well as whatever else was necessary to effectively dissolve barriers to solving hard science problems. Drawing from that research, he will describe which aspects of enhanced cognitive processes lead to successful solutions, followed by reviewing the range of problems attempted, solutions found, and the implications for renewed research. Even informal experimentation can be vastly improved by understanding how best to use these materials to potentiate new thinking about technical obstacles and to initiate conceptual breakthroughs.