I mean, you’re totally right to be sceptical of heritable learned experience but your description is off: Firstly, what do these 16 bits refer to (a single nucl

I mean, you’re totally right to be sceptical of heritable learned experience but your description is off: Firstly, what do these 16 bits refer to (a single nucleobase encodes 2 bits of information and there are easily > 8 mutations from a given individual to the next)? Secondly, the posited mechanism for these acquired traits would be epigenetic, not genetic. I.e. it wouldn’t be encoded in genetic mutations but in other chemical modifications of the DNA (and, more generally, the gamete). This has conceptual and practical problems in itself (notably due to germline reprogramming) and as I explained in other comments, the current majority view in the field is that it plays a minor role in evolution at best. But it’s not fundamentally impossible and, at least under very specific and constrained circumstances in certain species, it does happen.