To be frank, I disagree. A large amount of thinking at a level higher than day to day mundanities revolves around understanding how to think abstractly and crit

To be frank, I disagree. A large amount of thinking at a level higher than day to day mundanities revolves around understanding how to think abstractly and critically. Something like calculus, while completely worthless to many people, teaches concepts like: things that seem overtly complicated are not necessarily, things that appear simple and small could be wildly complicated, and the process of telling the difference through practice, skill, and experience; how to think in ways that are beyond sensory; how to build knowledge on subjects that can provide context (if you know how to perform limit functions you can more accurately estimate what a limit function would look like and then apply that concept or estimate) to the real world in abstract but useful ways. General intelligence exercises is just a term to mean “teaching people how to think in a more abstract way”