This both ablates (Illich’s “fallen” status) and distorts (natural cosmos vs. natural world, the latter being “scientific” in exactly the way Illich ordinarily critiques) the original meaning of the sentence.

ChatGPT is a remarkable achievement in machine learning, but this demonstrates exactly why it can’t be used to accurately summarize complex ideas.

That's so much more readable, even as someone who's read some Illich.

I haven’t read Illich, but I like both. Obviously the original from the article is more verbose, and if one doesn’t like that or finds it difficult or distracting, I am by no means going to hold it against them and in fact sympathise.

But there is a certain degree of imagery to the original text that I benefit from and enjoy.

Rending asunder is quite different from “disrupt”; the generality of “relational beings embedded…” is meaningful compared to the somewhat trite “social creatures” … etc.

Generally, many journalistic writers could really benefit from realising they are and probably never will be novelists or poets and that their job is to educate, edify and provide information and insight, which is often impeded by their insistence on exercising their literary rather than communication skills. But also, digging into the expressiveness one can muster with their language can work well for those willing and able to digest it when the topic or mood suits the language.

Personally, I got the feeling that this article falls more in the latter than the former, though I can see the friction some would have with the style.