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Let's say aliens arrive on Earth and demonstrate that Fusion is possible and leave (and don't tell us how).
Would we develop Fusion technology faster without being told about how it works by the aliens?
EDIT: This is about any technology in general (whether it be Fusion, FTL, Planet Destroyers etc) not specifically about FTL
I would think so. Innovation is probably the hardest bit and duplication is much easier. We see it with computers all the time now. Some small company comes up with a new idea that is "obvious" and then suddenly everyone else can duplicate it. The same is with other STEM fields, the knowledge that it exists (and ideally something to experiment with) helps reduce the false starts because you know where to go.
This idea applies to even the most basic ideas. Before some guy decided to have each of his family members do one step of making a needle, the factory method didn't really exist. As soon as it was understood, it spread out everywhere.
With the FTL example, having an example would tell us what not to waste time. So if we knew it was a junction point with a gate, then we'd drop all technology in independent drives, slingshots, or hyper-acceleration while focusing purely on paired gates. If we know we need a certain isotope, then we would focus on how to get that isotope instead of trying to get all isotopes and see if one of them works without knowing how to connect them. The same with power requirements, material requirements, or even navigation technology.
Knowing which paths not to go can save a lot of effort.
Let's take the title as the real question. Instead of being simply told FTL is possible, this answer shall assume that the aliens demonstrate FTL is possible. Their spaceship(s) arrive and depart at FTL velocities. This is observed and records are taken.
There is one obvious example. Nuclear weapons. There was a lot of bouhaha about spies passing on nuclear weapons secrets to the Russians. In fact, it is considered the only piece of information the Soviet Union's scientists only needed to know the bombs worked. The big problems that Tubular Alloys and the Manhattan Project had in developing the first nuclear bomb was they didn't know whether it would work. After the Trinity test, and the leveling of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was no doubt nuclear weapons worked.
Of course, the scientists who worked on nuclear bombs had an idea that nuclear fission was involved. Our ability to develop FTL travel after seeing aliens use it depends on whether we have any scientific concept that is the basis for the aliens' technology.
For example, the concepts our science has, currently, that is linked to FTL phenomena include wormholes, Krashnikov tubes, the Alcubierre drive, quantum entanglement, and tachyons. Now if the aliens' FTL has no connection with any of these scientific hypotheses, then our capacity to achieve FTL will be severely limited -- in the short term.
Once we have the inspiration that FTL technology exists then will be an ongoing program of research to discover any scientific basis for FTL travel.
If this leads to humans developing FTL travel several centuries earlier than otherwise might have happened. In that case, it could be said that knowing a technology existing, it can be developed faster.
However, if the technological gap between us and the aliens was equivalent to that between the 21st century and the Ancient Greeks. If we could demonstrate jet aircraft to ancient Athens, the likelihood they would develop jet aircraft earlier than the twentieth century is almost certainly zero.
We might learn something from observations and records of the alien technology. This might lead to the early development of FTL technology, but there are no guarantees. Ultimately, it may depend on the nature of the FTL technology itself. If the technology is millennia ahead of us, then it will be no go. If the technology is mere decades more advanced, then this is feasible.
The answer is it may be possible and it may be impossible. There are too many imponderables.
Yes it does. And there are plenty of examples in human development. A real treasure trove for this sort of thing is Jared Diamond's Guns, germs and steel. He calls it idea diffusion (as opposed to blueprint copying, where you get not just evidence of the technology, but also some idea of how it's achieved).
Couple of examples:
Besides dmoonfire's answer about knowing which paths not to go can save a lot of effort, I want to offer an additional look.
Knowing something is possible gives us more motivation to do it. Spending millions of dollars into research on something that is maybe possible, is way riskier than spending millions of dollars into research on something that is definitely possible.
Example: if my neighbor shows me he can fly without any tools, just a technique of swinging his arms which I don’t understand, I will try every day to fly because I know it is possible. If I didn’t know this, my motivation to learn to fly with swinging my arms is way less.
Yes, most definitely, particularly for technology like FTL.
Research on advanced physics takes a lot of money. Right now, no substantial funds are directed into research of FTL, as it is seen as impossible.
Seeing an example of working FTL would obviously change this situation, making governments and investors direct more research funds into this field.
This depends on who they tell.
Public
Right now, if you try to tell the public and government that FTL is possible in the scenario above, people and governments will have an incentive to work hard and try to figure something out. Right now, all of our current theories say that FTL is impossible and so therefore it becomes a waste of time. But if we have incentive, it has a higher probability of happening. But, be careful, because this isn't always the case. You could think of the fact that the "aliens" never gave us proof of FTL technology, so it could be dismissed as "fraud."
Individual
If you tell an individual, this is basically impossible. First of all, they wouldn't have the means, no matter how powerful they are, and second, if they try to get someone to help them, no one will because of how absurd the theory sounds.
The main driving force which accelerates research is money. Having demonstrated that something is possible drastically helps in procuring money for research.
Let's say you are a billionaire venture capitalist. A team of scientists approaches you and says they want to do research on FTL travel. They promise you all the patent rights, if you just give them a budget of a few million dollar a month.
Would you do it?
You don't know if there even is a profitable method of FTL travel. You don't even know if it will be practicable (like manned space exploration beyond Earth orbit. All the rage in the 70s, now we know robots are way cheaper). Heck, you don't even know if the laws of physics in our universe even permit FTL travel (spoiler: general consensus among physicists is that they don't). The risk that your investment won't have any return at all is huge.
But what if the aliens have already demonstrated that FTL travel is not just physically possible but so feasible that they can use it just to give us a casual surprise visit?
You now know that there is a realistic chance that what those scientists are up to might work. Your risk is drastically reduced. The prospect of being the first to bring FTL technology to market has become tangible.
The same logic doesn't just apply to private investors but also to government investors.
I think we can compare this to something we all know:
The ability to see with our eyes, detect patterns and interpret the world around us.
We know it's possible. We understand how an eye works optically. We know how to use it pretty well. We even have an intuition as to the process of how we recognize things, but we don't know the details of how it works. So there's a limit to the amount of reverse-engineering that's possible.
At this point we replicated an eye with a good degree of success in the form of digital camera, outputting information that can be processed by a computer.
But I'm willing to bet that we wouldn't have spend so much money, time, brainpower and energy to make computer vision happen if we didn't know intrinsically that "vision" was even possible. Imagine we were born without eyes; we wouldn't even have entertained the idea.
So, yeah, I think knowing something exists helps us replicate it, but the amount of details available about the implementation determines how easy it is.
I would agree that in general, knowing something works can significantly speed up your own development effort, but I would like to point out that it by no means guaranteed. For example, imagine you are living in a world without birds or bats, but your science and tech developed enough for you to start pondering the unthinkable: the flight. And then you see aliens who are birds and they fly so effortlessly and gracefully flapping their wings. So you suddenly might waste tons of resources and time and effort trying to recreate what you know works, instead of exploring technologically simpler way of doing this, that you would likely try if you never saw those flapping wings.
Yes
For the simple reason that it will now be monumentally easier to get funding for research. One of the biggest hurdles to making breakthroughs is finding the funding in order to hire the minds that can work on the issue. By seeing an FTL in action, governments and investors now know with certainty that not only is FTL theoretically possible, its been implemented.
Now, governments, universities, and private companies alike will be willing to pump incredible amounts of money into research, because whatever government gets their hands on it first will have a huge advantage in space travel and whatever company discovers it first will become incredibly rich and powerful overnight
Yes. Prior to being introduced to horses, indigenous peoples of the Americas maybe domesticated a few animals. Once they were introduced to horses, horses quickly became integrated into their cultures.
When the Wright brothers showed that powered flight was possible, other inventors quickly learned and developed their own airplanes, even if they only had a simple understanding of the Wright flyer. In fact, many invented airplanes that were vastly superior to the Wright flyer.
Once we are shown something is possible, it hardens our resolve to accomplish that possibility, because we know we are not chasing a pipedream. Edison pursued the lightbulb because he saw it was possible from an early experiment.
It will speed up the process of development, yes, but by how much? Will it be like 103 years into 3 years? Or 890 years into 860 years? Hard to say when we don't know what makes a working FTL drive, thus, as writers, we would need to make something up. Maybe, there already is a possible inventor of FTL drive playing with lasers in his university lab, that may be able to teleport a photon across his lab as a proof of concept within a week, but without aliens showing will never believe in the possibility and will just continue engraving emoticons into tin cans with university's lasers.
