I think it is mostly about motivation. Intuition will come with practice and will remain even if you forget some details. Why limit yourself just to models tha

I think it is mostly about motivation. Intuition will come with practice and will remain even if you forget some details. Why limit yourself just to models that map well to everyday life? Everyday life sucks in a lot of ways after all, and imaginary worlds are intriguing. People like fiction. In the case of abstract math, you have a world with varied and intricate structure but lots of real life applications as well.