yeah I'll concede that when searching around
after I posted what I did above, I see that playing with sidewall max isn't a prescription for disaster as I previously assumed. Particularly with Prius owners, those that used OEM specs had their outer edges wear out super fast because of increase heat/flexing, and those that used sidewall max had minimal wear, even including the middle of the tire.
And yeah, brucepick, your points about load capacity vs. psi make perfect sense