To me, the Carter Catastrophe reads like wishful Christian thinking wrapped in statistical pseudoscience. It's based on the assumption that we, ie: you or me or anyone alive today, has the equal (or in fact, much greater) probability of living in a time of greater population (hence, a possible distant future). Statistically speaking it is sound...if one completely ignores reality (as, unfortunately, so many of these type of arguments do).

The reality it is ignoring is simply this...I'm alive now (or you are alive now, or my wife is alive now...) because there is no other time that any of us could be alive.

That almost sounds circular or anthropic in nature, but I assure you it's not. Rather, I'll call it the Bio-historical rebuttal.

What I mean is this: who I am is a product of my precise biology--beginning, most fundamentally, with my genetics, which forms the foundation of 'me'. From that, of course, follows the environmental factors that fine-tuned my personality. But the genetics, the precise combination of that one sperm and egg are the ONLY combination that could have produced 'me'. Any other combination, even from my biological parents (as those of you with siblings clearly know) would not and could not produce 'me'. Obvious, my parents are also the results of similar events as were their's, back through time. From this it is trivial to see that, not only could I only be born to those parents through that particular combination of genetic material but, therefore, 'I' could only be born in this particular time.

With this understanding, the foundation of the Carter Catastrophe completely crumbles because there is 0% chance of 'me' (or anyone else alive today) being born at any other time, regardless of how many more generations yet may live.

Therefore, at best, the Carter Catastrophe is an amusing game of statistics, at worst...well, maybe that could be the topic for some interesting novels.