rewards of natural training vs enhancement

I posted a reflection on what it means to achieve great things easily through technology and to achieve the same through rigorous practice.. this was my post :

rewards of natural training vs enhancement

I practice the Indian martial art form known as "Kalarippayyattu". Now, I have reached a stage where I can catch mosquitos inside my palm and let them fly away without crushing them (may not sound very impressive, but those who practice martial arts know the value of this ability ).

Having gained several of such insights during the practice of martial arts, I feel very satisfied when I reach certain levels. Acquiring each new skill takes a long time of practice. But when you get it, it feels just great !!!

Now, this got me thinking. Life enhancement technologies are developing improved chemicals to enhance neuro-muscular co-ordination to much greater levels than what is achievable by a martial artist in much shorter a time. Come to think of it, Neo (the matrix guru) hooks up his brain to the computer and wakes up to say " I know kung fu".

Would the ready and instant acquisition of skills that usually takes years to achive make us lose respect for such skills. If everybody is able to do the splits after taking a pill, would we lose respect for hard work ?

Now, the FIFA world cup football games are on. It's amazing to watch the players do those acrobatic moves and superior body control during the games. This surely is a result of har work and immense amounts of practice.

In a not too distant future, we would have sporting events where enhanced humans would compete. For them, the acquisition of football skills ( Like those Ronaldinho of the Brazillian team) would be second nature because they would be genetically engineered to play great football. Now, would the game still be interesting ?

I do not know if I have asked a difficult question. But, I can explain it with one more example. In India, we have two major streams of medical practice. One is the modern day allopathy and the other is traditional Ayurvedic treatment. It takes much longer for Ayurvedic treatment to cure a particular malady than allopathy. But, in Ayurvedic treatment, you get a complete restoration of health rather than the specific recovery from a particular symptom achieved in allopathy. Now, which is better ? The quicker one, or the more complete one ?

I got some very good responses and I compiled them. This was my compilation post :

Really nice responses from all you people out there ! I have pasted what i felt very interesting from each of the first four posts on this topic. On the whole, I think most of us agree that the easy acqusition of new skills are not really a bad idea. However, as Marcelo Rinesi notes, it is useless to have a basket full of eggs unless you know what to do with the eggs in a creative manner. Sky Marsen and Miriam Leis observe the important point that easy upload of skills isn't really a bad idea considering the practical reasons behind the same. Michael La Torra observes that such abilities should be used for the upliftment of the society at large which is in harmony with the aspirations of transhumanism.
The quotes from the four posts are as follows :


Marcelo Rinesi
"If/when, say, close brain-machine interfacing becomes possible, that
won't make study and hard cognitive work useless, but quite the
contrary. It will make a lot of things possible without much effort,
true, but it will also give those who take pains to hone their skills
the opportunity to do things that now are all but impossible. Again,
everybody wins."


Sky marsen
"Another relevant point is that many skills are needed
in order to achieve certain aims - in other words as
means to ends. Language acquisition is a case in
point. People learn a foreign language to communicate,
not just to learn it for its own sake (usually, at
least). So the effort is actually quite empty in this
case."


Michael LaTorra
"So if we could use technology to make it easier for people to acquire
skills, not only would we help all those individuals, but we could
reasonably expect a great societal benefit as well."


Miriam Leis
I think natural training and enhancement might not be incompatable with
each other, or rule out each other.
Sometimes the way to the goal is more important than the goal itself,
and sometimes one just needs some
skill in a rather short time and just doesn't have the time and
interest to go through long times of training.