Hmm. Interesting. I guess I have taken it for granted that this was the case. I don't think we could evolve language without it. Humanity is unique in the amount of information encoded memetically. I take it to be 50/50 with genetic information. Not for any rigorous analysis of information content but as the roughest possible rounding meaning "I don't know but it is a lot"

I haven't actually ever studied evolution so take everything I say with all the salt the sea.

But ...

I define life very generally as information that replicates in it's environment.

So the idea that human replication includes biological encoding as well as educational encoding presents no problem. There is also no reason the information cannot choose the better carrier. Education allows extremely fast and complex adaptation, but it is also very lossy.

I don't think it is possible to completely understand the interplay of different types of information that we have. We can't see all the assumptions that go into the perceptions that allow us to communicate in the first place. We also can't see all the consequences of what may seem silly traditions. Things like marriage that are half encoded in our DNA and half encoded in society.

Then you get to the fact that society is it self an emergent evolving thing. All the information needed to run society cannot be encoded into one individual. I think this where the notion of sheeple comes from. We understand one corner of learned social necessity and assume everyone else who doesn't understand it is a sheep. But they are thinking the same of us as they perform their own critical function.

This is why I don't like labeling things "Fiat." It could be that things that don't make sense to us and appear dictated from on high are simply received cultural encodings that are inhabiting different minds.