Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations

> Someone who's afraid of a specific thing, however, cannot transmit fear of that specific thing unless there's some incredible and unexplored cognition-to-biomolecular signalling mechanism that's entirely unexplored and undescribed. While there is absolutely no conclusive evidence, there are a few studies that indicate this is a possibility. One such study from 2013: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594 Again, there’s not strong proof- but at least plausible evidence.

> These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people. It's a very fundamental thing My guess is we'll discover that biological intelligence is 'learning' not just from your experience, but that of thousands of ancestors. There are a few weak pointers in that direction. Eg. A father who experiences a specific fear can pass that fear to grandchildren through sperm alone. [1]. I believe this is at least part of the reason humans appear to perform so well with so little training data compared to machines. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594

The article seems quite level-headed and thoughtful. That said, this jumps the gun: > The idea that trauma is passed down epigenetically is not only unscientific, it’s also un-agentic; if you believe your trauma is hardwired into your DNA, you’re prone to passively accept it rather than actively trying to overcome it. Recent research is pretty convincing that the "folk wisdom" of trauma being passed down to later generations is a real thing. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fearful-memories-... https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594 Edit: and I'll add that the mice were able to overcome the inherited trauma, too, so you could argue that it's actually an empowering concept. Even though we can't control what we inherit, this shows you can overcome it.