Well that's the crux of it, isn't it? How do you know what they really mean, if not through the words? You have to impose a mental model on the speaker, which w

Well that's the crux of it, isn't it? How do you know what they really mean, if not through the words? You have to impose a mental model on the speaker, which we of course do anyways. Saying ETF crash specifically sounds like there is an idea there, and lots of people talk about thinking that ETFs specifically have problems that owning stocks directly would not have, so in my mind the model is that the speaker has an idea about how ETFs cause the crash through hidden risk. And since hidden risk is behind most crashes, it's definitely an interesting direction to ask about.