Everyone is capable of, and can benefit from, mathematical thinking

I’m actually interested in the “can benefit from” claim in this title. I don’t particularly doubt that most people could become reasonably good at math, but I wonder how much of the juice is worth the squeeze, and how juicy it is on the scale from basic arithmetic up to the point where you’re reading papers by June Huh or Terry Tao.

As anti-intellectual as it sounds, you could imagine someone asking, is it worth devoting years of your life to study this subject which becomes increasingly esoteric and not obviously of specific benefit the further you go, at least prima facie? Many people wind up advocating for mathematics via aesthetics, saying: well it’s very beautiful out there in the weeds, you just have to spend dozens of years studying to see the view. That marketing pitch has never been the most persuasive for me.

I'll second guerrilla - you can absolutely benefit from mathematical thinking without pushing into territory higher than undergaduate studies.

You can even benefit from the thinking taught in good high school coursework (or studying online).

At an arithmetic, bookkeeping level you can better appreciate handling finances and the seductive pitfalls surrounding wagers (gambling, betting, risk taking).

My claim isn’t really that there’s no benefit or utility to math — that’s obviously false — but that maybe its benefits to regular people are more modest than the cheerleaders want to admit.

What are the costs (in your estimation at least) to "regular people" (regular by your metric) of not engaging in easy bake low level "mathematical thinking".

* How many have a lower return on { X } through not understanding compound interest, tax brackets, leveraging assets, etc.

* How many have steady net losses through "magical thinking" wrt gambling, betting, hot stock tips.