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People lie (to you and to themselves) about what their policies are. But there are simple ways to filter what they say, and eliminate the lies.

They may, for instance, say they have policies that would in fact be impossible. If I said "I try to take the trash out while monitoring my effect on global ecosystems"—this is not something I can actually do. A good question to ask would be: how do you monitor your effects on global ecosystems? And how does this relate to taking the trash out? Maybe I just imagine my trash going into a landfill.

Or, they'll say they do something for diffuse benefit, when really, there is a very concrete benefit.

• For instance, they want to be liked in their ecological friend group, and so they imagine the trash going to a landfill, or claim they imagine it. If they were assured of being liked, they wouldn't do the trash thing.
• Or they're trying to spread and ecological vision. And they believe that if they do this imagination thing, this will help to spread it—by keeping it forefront in their mind so that they can spread it better.

None of these are diffuse benefits. You can check this kind of thing by asking the appropriate "would you still x if y" question, and by making sure that these various outcomes are untracked. If they don't pay much attention to whether they're spreading the social vision or whether their friends like them, that's a good sign.

You can also test that it's really adoped as a policy. If so, it will have crowded out other policies that would have seemed almost as important. You can ask: what would you do if you weren't doing this? When did you switch?

In practice, by interrogating someone in this way, you can usually get to something deeply meaningful, with an untracked outcome and a real presence in their life.