# Hari Seldon's "Psychohistory"-is It Feasible?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hari-seldons-psychohistory-is-it-feasible/129256>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 23, 2002, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hari-seldons-psychohistory-is-it-feasible/129256 "2002-09-23T12:36:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 75

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\
**Post date:** [July 13, 2013, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hari-seldons-psychohistory-is-it-feasible/129256/75 "2013-07-13T05:27:44Z")

</div>

Here is the first “equation” above

t+1: X^2 = X x X = X + DX = X + qXX = X + Y

t+1 is obvious. Can you rigorously define “x”? Equating it to X^2 makes it look like standard multiplication, though I’d think matrix multiplication would work better, but it is far from clear how the multiplicative factor of X is converted to the various additive groups. Thus my request for a rigorous definition of this operation. Your description was far from rigorous.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hari-seldons-psychohistory-is-it-feasible/129256)._