But you are in effect agreeing that the timetable for human extinction could be extended by reducing population levels. That's not a reasonable hypothesis in and of itself, although it may get support from completely unrelated issues like the rate at which we use resources, etc. Note that any argument of the latter type is what I mean by the poker game-- doing a better job of inferring probabilities than a "default" thinking mode (in short, if Carter really thinks that way, I'd love to play some high-stakes poker with him!).