> Chamath mistaking 0.85 absolute as 0.85 relative is fairly easy to do.

I would disagree. If you're actually looking at the data, then anyone with a high school education should know that you don't take percentages of percentages like this. I still think it's ignorance more than malice, but I can't trust someone who would make a simple mistake like this to prove a point. I need my sources of information to at least be unbiased in how they view facts of data.

You can represent those facts differently. For example, he might think that 30% of growth being tied to government spending is high and I can follow his reasoning based on that. However if he claims that the actual figure is 85% then the starting point itself is incorrect.

The order of magnitude of his mistake makes it damning. Especially considering he began his commentary by noting that "the data can be confusing"

"Data is hard, let me interpret it for you" is specifically crafted to get people to trust the speaker ("wow this guy understands data I better listen") and discourage independent corroboration ("I don't want to look at it myself if it's hard and I'm likely to misinterpret, best leave that to an expert").

Sure - it's an easy mistake to make if you are dealing with data that don't mean anything to you. But anyone with even a tiny bit of experience reading macroeconomic data should be able to tell that something is very off with that number and question it before parrotting it in a podcast.