Why are we never happy?

I don't consider GAS a symptom of discontent at all. My personal experience with GAS is that when you don't have something, it is easy to convince yourself that the object of your desire is wonderful and will solve your problems. If you eventually obtain the object and use it, you obtain more information about the object and realise that it has its own set of disadvantages and drawbacks like anything else. GAS is a symptom of lack of real information and your original desire is fueled more by ignorance of the truth and fantasy than analytical understanding. Experience with the object once you obtain it, makes this obvious, this leads to disappointment, and eventually to new GAS for an improved object of desire. The cycle continues.

The only thing that prevents GAS long term is obtaining true information about the whole class of objects of desire in advance, and understanding the advantages of the new thing are not as great as you fantasise, thus saving you lots of money. Perhaps loaning the object for a while.

Personally, I now have plentiful information about the true performance and usefulness of different cameras. I obtained that information and cured GAS by homeopathic means!

Now that I know for a fact what the advantages and disadvantages of many new cameras are, I no longer have the space for fantasies about the imaginary advantages and therefore no longer desire to upgrade. The only remnants of GAS are probably not even to be considered to be GAS, as they are minor practical things like wishing the grip of my camera was a little larger or that the camera could be set to 1:1 aspect ratio. Fancy lenses, more resolution, better features etc no longer have any pull on me. I have gathered enough information from prior purchases to know exactly what benefits and satisfaction will or won't come from satisfying further GAS. And that has done for the GAS. New cameras are boring, just like your old ones.

When I go to the race track I have a Z6 and a Sigma 150-600. That's about a $2000 combo. I would love to have a Z8 and a 400 4.5, but that's $7000.

I am at the point where I am inching towards retirement with some concerns about finance, and I cant even remotely justify an expense like that. I am just having to learn slowly not to buy everything I want, as that will be my reality 5 years from now. I will be lucky to afford cable....LOL.

It's taken me a while to replicate my film system, but I probably won't buy a new camera for a very long time (I'd used my two Nikkormats for 35 years before I bought a digital PS (Nikon 775). My oldest camera is a Gx85, then 2 G9's, and finally I got another video camera (Gh6). I have many lenses (10) but some are video centric. The most expensive part of my "imaging system" is my computer and software (Photoshop CC, On1 plugins, Divinci Resolve Studio, Mercalli PRO, and Presonous Studio One PRO v.6). I am happy and realize that at 73 I am done doing images for commercial work including videos. There is nothing I've ever done that can not be done better with my current system.

The sad reality for the majority, is that they do NOT have "the eye' for photography. You have it or you don't, and no camera will ever provide that holy grail of insight!

It can surely be trained?

Maybe try to develop an interest in photography?

Learning to draw and paint before taking up photography does help. Fortunately, painting is fairly cheap and drawing is very cheap.

Don

Indeed it is, but to somewhat lower extent stuff can be trained. The gifted ones either get to the point B faster, or the go further. But almost everyone can make a cut. That's what matters.

I did some national challenges to end up in top 10. That's enough. You have to do these things, although not winning, because if you do nothing, you are nothing. Don't resent being second or third or....

Lord, forgive me for I have consumed ...

... an M42-mount Carl Zeiss Jena 20mm Flektogon f/4, with no need for it whatsoever.

Life is not a game and there is no winning and losing, well, except under extreme conditions like finding yourself in the middle of a war zone.
Life is to be experienced. What you make of that experience is up to you.

I've always taken issue with the argument that being good at some activities is more admirable than being good at other "less skilled" activities. The "admission" price may be higher for a higher skilled activities, but regardless of that, to be in the top 1-2% of any activity requires just as much work/talent regardless of the price of "admission."

How would you go about demonstrating that this assertion is true? Is there some kind of test that could be performed?

For what it is worth, I disagree (at least in part). I think most skills can be trained, and most skills can be improved. I suspect most people have some kind of minimal natural photographic eye that can be trained. if they didn't, there would not be an audience for photography, as no one could tell good from bad.

The part where I agree, is epitomised by the fact that my cat cannot take an exam in mathematics or art, and no amount of training would make any difference to this. Clearly at the extremes, there must be at least some kind of genetic component present. But people aren't cats and perhaps we all possess some talent, some "eye" that can be trained.

What doesn't seem possible is to be able to tease this out talent from training just from looking at the photographs. Is this photograph the product of raw talent or some talent plus extensive training? It seems to be quite natural for viewers to ignore the presence of a trained element and jump to the assumption it is all down to talent. But we know people like to hide the training and present the talent. The waste bin is a photographer's best friend. How could the viewer ever know?

I don't consider myself to be a creative person - at least there hasn't been much evidence of it in the past. I can't draw, I can't play music, I can't dance, I can't write plot lines, I can't sing, I can't paint, I was always the one in team meetings terrified the finger would point at me and the question posed "David, what do you think we should do to solve the problem?"... yet, with photography the mechanical element has released me from some personal limitations. I seem to have been able to develop a concept of what makes a decent photo (at least ones I like) and to glean some idea of how to put that knowledge to good effect in making my own photos. And although the absence of original thought still seems to be present in my photography, I can at least bend a scene towards the kind of photograph I like. And my awareness of the negative elements that ruin a photo has improved, as has my ability to excise some of those elements from my images. I feel as if my current photographic "eye" far exceeds where I started from. And that doesn't feel like the result of talent to me, but of training. I have found the very best training is looking at lots of photos and intuiting the ones I like from the "buzz" of adrenaline. Then I take the elements of the "buzz" photos and build them into my images. And the better ones provide at least a frisson of that "buzz".

I feel that constitutes evidence that training is more important than talent. But an actual test of some kind would be useful.

One thing I know to be true, yet I still wander off on a tangent every few years, is that I'm more happy shooting with cheaper, less capable gear. Truth. I enjoyed my Canon EOS M1 a lot more than my 6D. Even though it was a bit of a shock to the system to begin with. With much worse DR, high ISO noise performance, AF speed & accuracy, an so on.
I also had more fun with my Panny GX8 than my 6D. Love my Panny G9, bought it at release, it went everywhere with me pretty much on a daily basis. But out of curiosity mainly, I picked up a brand new sub $500 Panny G100 about 8 months ago, and had an absolute blast. I still love my G9, it's a fabulously capable body that doesn't do a thing wrong for my purposes, I just have more fun with the DPreview rated worst camera of the year. So much so, that I bought another one a few months back, in case I damaged the original, or it failed to proceed for some reason. Go figure. There's no real tangible reason I can think of, it's just fun.
Sometimes I get the urge to pick up a Fuji GFX of some description, they're entirely affordable for me, but past experience tells me I'd end up enjoying my most despised cameras on the interwebz more. Strange but true

I think you're confusing experience with training

You can buy better gear to make better pictures. Buying better pencils won't make any difference.