In Occam's Razor terms, "super-sophisticated aliens did it" is just about the most complicated answer with the most "entities" conceivable. It is a great deal simpler to hypothesize that we've missed some aspect of stellar dynamics that fits the observations. This is further boosted by the fact that we have a history of such things (pulsars, etc).
It may be true, but it is definitely a hypothesis sitting on the bottom of the list of sensible possibilities. Any rational analysis pretty much has to put "our understanding of stellar dynamics is missing something" multiple orders of magnitude more likely, given our current state of information.
In Occam's Razor terms, "super-sophisticated aliens did it" is just about the most complicated answer with the most "entities" conceivable.
Occam's Razor isn't a nuclear weapon. You still have to decide which entities are necessary and which are superfluous, presumably through some insight into the underlying premises.
In this case we simply don't have the perspective we need to decide what's "outlandish" (to use Sharlin's term) and what isn't. What's inherently outlandish about aliens? We're aliens, too, from the perspective of every other civilization that might exist.
See my other post -- some very credible authorities would say it's surprising that we haven't found evidence of any ET civilizations, given the number of possible habitats for them. What's almost certain is that the only such civilizations we could observe are the few who can deliberately alter the appearance of a star. Not only is it scientifically inappropriate to reject "Aliens did it!" as a hypothesis or to assign it an arbitrary (un)likelihood, but IMO we shouldn't even be surprised if that turns out to be the case. Alien civilizations are, or should be, no big deal.
Occam's Razor is a heuristic, not a law. I think you're misunderstanding what it is. It doesn't mean aliens are impossible. It means the rational conclusion based on the evidence puts the probability of aliens very low. This is because, on the evidence we have right now, we know we are far more likely to be missing some quirk of science than to be finding aliens, because we have on multiple occasions found we've been missing out on science. We don't need aliens to explain this yet.
Show me a coherent information signal coming from this star and I'll change my tune in a heartbeat, but "the brightness of this star is behaving a bit oddly" just isn't that spectacular of a signal.
The aliens are superfluous entities because "aliens did it by unknown mechanisms" has no additional explanatory power than "it occured by unknown mechanisms."
Depends on the question you ask. "What's interfering with this star's light?" is one question. "Can we find evidence suggestive of any other civilizations, specifically the kind who could build Dyson spheres?" is another.
It may be true, but it is definitely a hypothesis sitting on the bottom of the list of sensible possibilities. Any rational analysis pretty much has to put "our understanding of stellar dynamics is missing something" multiple orders of magnitude more likely, given our current state of information.