“On “gendertropes” in dath ilan” by Eliezer Yudkowsky
Podcast: LessWrong (30+ Karma)Published On: Sat Jul 04 2026
Description: I have sometimes been asked with respect to my fiction, "What the hell is a 'gendertrope'?" "Gendertrope" is a word from the language of the fictional world of dath ilan; it appears in my stories about dath ilan and dath ilani. I have observed that (1) the meaning of "gendertrope" seems hard for many people to grasp initially, and (2) once people do grasp that meaning, they sometimes use the word in ordinary conversation with other people who know it, including those who previously complained they didn't know what it meant. So "gendertrope" seems a concept-handle worth explaining for reasons beyond fiction alone. A dath ilani would first start by noting that gendertropes are a radial / prototype-based category, such as are natural to natural language, rather than their having been carefully mathematically defined. A dath ilani would then tell you a "gendertrope" is mostly definable as a (big prominent prototypical) subtype of a "personality-trope" (usually a "relationship-trope" / "interpersonal+personality-trope"[1]); narrowed to such tropes with (1) a gender skew / links to other aspects of gender performance, OR[fuzzy][2] (2) that are useful for sorting people into good relationships of the mating / build-a-life-together subtype. I shall start by explaining [...] The original text contained 4 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: July 3rd, 2026 Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/n436eA4cQEr5njCeM/on-gendertropes-in-dath-ilan --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.
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