I found a dropped domain that has some nice backlinks that are relevant to my site. Will 301'ing this domain to my site really have the effect of those sites pointing at mine? Hasn't Google figured out how to detect dropped domains and invalidate the links by now? Sorry I'm a domain name noob, so please bear with me if this is a stupid question
It would depend how similar the site was to yours and whether the links had any value (and if they stay in place). Dropped domains are likely to lose their trust but this doesn't always happen.