This content was created by Dennis Prager. This content was uploaded by Dennis Prager. This is a YouTube interview-style segment titled "Dennis Prager Speaks with PragerU Star Will Witt" (created 2021-09-20) featuring host Dennis Prager and guest Will Witt. In the excerpt they discuss Witt’s campus outreach, concrete persuasion tactics and questions he uses to change minds, why some people (especially those for whom leftism functions as a moral religion) are harder to persuade, advice Witt would give college students, and promotion of his book How to Win Friends and Influence Enemies. The clip ends with a host-read sponsor mention for Nerve Renew.
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Well, I mean, most of the people who are listening right now have probably seen my videos on PragerU, going around campus, talking to people, and I've been able to change literally thousands of minds, talking to thousands of people.
That's right, you have.
And so essentially, what I wanted to do with this book is, is there's a lot of conservative books that I feel just kind of give, here's what's wrong with America. I wanted to give people the actual tools and say, hey, here's the questions, persuasion tactics, and facts that you can actually use when talking to people to change their minds, things that I have actually been successful with.
Well, you have been successful, and I love watching you with college students, for example. So what— give an example of something you now know that you didn't know when you began that's effective.
Well, I think the most important thing is that I'm not actually the one changing their mind. I think this is something that people have to come to realize, that they shouldn't be so vain when they're coming into conversations, that it's not always going to be you changing their mind. It's them changing their own mind and doing research afterwards, because because they can't actually answer the questions that you give them. So they have to be able to come to that realization and say, hey, I couldn't answer this guy's question when he came up to me on campus. Maybe I should do some more research. Maybe the things that I was holding on to aren't actually true.
I think that's terrific. However, we both know that a lot of people will hear you and not be affected. That's true for me. If I'm batting.500, I'm doing well. So how do you account, and I'm not sure there's an answer, for why person A is affected and B isn't?
I think it goes down into, I'm a big fan of Nietzsche, and Nietzsche talks about, you know, God is dead and everything like that, and that, but that if when Christianity and Judeo-Christian values die in the West, people will need a new form of religion. And so that religion is leftism. And so through leftism, people have turned that into, hey, this isn't about economics or, you know, my political beliefs, this is my religion, this is my moral doctrine. And so there's, it's harder to change people's minds on things when it is their entire their moral philosophy.
It's like having a Christian convert.
Right, right, exactly. So when you have that, it is incredibly difficult, and those people are going to be— it's going to be far harder. But you know, Amala, she was part of this intense religion of the left, and still, she was able to have her mind changed.
To her great credit.
Yeah, so I'll never say never for anybody.
No, correct.
But it is— there are definitely people who it's harder for, for sure.
So if you could say, you could say 3 things to every college student or every college-aged person in America. You have their attention for 5 minutes. You could say 3 things. What would you say?
Well, the first thing is be brave. I mean, that's the most important thing because it's like if you have all this information in your head or you have these values and you don't actually go and use them, then it's a waste of those values in my opinion. Imagine if Albert Einstein with all his knowledge never actually used those ideas and values to change minds. The second part I think has to be with self-education, is that people are expecting the world around them to do all the educating for them and just think that it's going to be easy to have these values, when in reality you need to be proactive about the things that you really care about and being prepared to take on the other arguments. And then the last one is never sacrificing your values, because, I mean, you talk about this when it's like college students with their grades. You're going to sacrifice for a grade. What else are you going to sacrifice for?
Well, that's also part of be brave.
Yeah, yeah, they kind of go hand in hand.
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