The first is of course from the King James Bible which for centuries was essentially a standard that all English speaking peoples aspired to. If you find that version difficult I would expect much literary writing before the 1940s also seems difficult. This is just to say I recommend reading the King James even if you are an atheist, as I am.

I also have to say that the first strikes me as being written by someone that might be smarter than I am, the second as being written by someone significantly less intelligent than I, yet somehow placed by society in a position of authority over me.

Yeah, I found Orwell's easier to understand and quite fast to read as well, but I think it's just because of the style of writing of the first one. It's from an earlier style of prose that I'm just not used to.

I also don't have a problem with large words as long as I'm well familiar with the words. The length of a word has nothing to do with the complexity of its meaning. We just have a limit to the number of pronounceable combinations of 5 letters.

I had to reread the first one but I wanted to read it! The second one was understood on the first scan but was a chore to read.

Does that make sense?

I wonder if this is due to experience with reading technical documentation?

I think the second requires deeper concentration, but is still quite readable compared to the kind of low-content engagement / SEO stuff one read on the internet even before LLMs

The grammar is more straightforward. It has some extraneous words, and makes conspicuously bad choices of vocabulary, but it's still a more direct statement.

This is why almost 100% of hard and social scientific discourse reads almost exactly like this these days.

I found it an improvement too

Second helped explain the first, appreciated having both (but I’m no genius or nothin’).

Seconded

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