Center for Inquiry's video: Videogame Science and UFOs with Mick West

What’s a videogame programmer doing analyzing UFO videos? And why should people trust what a programmer has to say when people with PhDs in physics disagree with him? In many ways, videogame programmers make ideal UFO investigators: the simple math used to make 3D objects move in a virtual setting and the code used to display them can be reversed, used to break down UFO videos and figure out where the object is, how far away it is, and what it’s doing. West is a retired videogame programmer who’s become known for analyzing UFO videos. He’ll explain how he reverse-engineers UFO videos and demonstrate how he uses other videogame programming techniques to visualize this interactively. The skills and techniques used to find the root cause of bugs and glitches in videogames are the same used to figure out what a UFO is. And no one knows videogame science—and UFOs—like Mick West. Mick West is a CSI Fellow and the author of Escaping the Rabbit Hole – How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect. A retired software engineer, West is the creator of Metabunk, which utilizes crowdsourcing and technical analysis to investigate UFO cases. West uses his background in coding 3D graphics, physics, and linear algebra, honed by decades in the videogame industry, to create custom tools to recreate, simulate, visualize, and analyze UFO videos. The results are published on metabunk.org and at youtube.com/mickwest This talk took place on April 27, 2023, at 7:00 pm EDT.