The stupid questions thread was one of the regular threads on LessWrong 1.0. It's a place where no question is to stupid to be asked and anybody who answers is encouraged to be kind.
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
Given that exponential technological progress is likely, or at least plausible, how is life expectancy only around 80 years?
There's no observed exponential technological progress if you measure our ability to increase life expectancy.
Whether technology will actually increase or decrease life expectancy depends a lot on the assumptions that you put into your models.