Have we discovered an alien civilization?
Have we discovered an alien civilization? ISS/NASA

Yes, the star system has bizarre features. Yes, at present, we can't find a natural explanation for these features. Yes, when something in space behaves bizarrely, you can start thinking about life, because life is, after all, matter behaving very bizarrely. The center of this star system, KIC 8462852, appears to have a “swarm of megastructures.”

But if this is a sign of civilizational life, which I think it's not, it would be stunning to me that the first sign of extraterrestrial life we ever found was already so far beyond the bacterial stage. That would really throw human understanding into a state of confusion.

The human is civilized, but only recently so. For almost all of the history of life, human-scale civility was absent. When we look at the history of life, cities are very, very, very new. They have just been born. How is it possible that something as super-exceptional as a civilization can be spotted so soon in space? It just sounds crazy.