how to disable previous and next post links in twenty sixteen

you should be able to hide it with this CSS in style.css of a child theme or via a cuatom CSS plugin:

nav.pagination { display: none; }

or edit index.php (and archive.php and search.php) in a child theme, and remove this section:

// Previous/next page navigation.
			the_posts_pagination( array(
				'prev_text'          => __( 'Previous page', 'twentysixteen' ),
				'next_text'          => __( 'Next page', 'twentysixteen' ),
				'before_page_number' => '<span class="meta-nav screen-reader-text">' . __( 'Page', 'twentysixteen' ) . ' </span>',
			) );