Reason and rationality, then, are not sufficient for being a good and capable person. But my argument is that they are necessary, and on average, the more the better. It’s not just intelligence, however. I said that if you were curious about what sort of person a child would grow up to be, an intelligence test would be a great measure. But there’s something even better. Self-control can be seen as the purest embodiment of rationality in that it reflects the working of a brain system (embedded in the frontal lobe, the part of the brain that lies behind the forehead) that restrains our
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