It's not backwards. Look at the front and rear as four tire patches making contact with the pavement. One cannot give those four patches any more than the maximum amount of traction as provided by the design of the vehicle, the suspension and the tire design, but one can OPTIMIZE the traction to its maximum potential where it is needed most.
When a vehicle understeers (or 'pushes') the front tires are turning at a greater angle than needed to turn a corner. This is why most street vehicles today are set up from the factory to understeer in most circumstances. The vehicle is not turning as much as required, usually because the front traction limit has been exceeded, but the average driver panics and takes their foot off the gas. This slows the vehicle, the fronts begin to 'bite' again, and the car safely goes around the corner. It is a safe way to set up a vehicle for average drivers on the street.
Race drivers hate cars that push because they are slow.
When a vehicle oversteers (sometimes called 'loose' or 'shoves') the rear wants to start steering the front. Most drivers are familiar with power-on oversteer, where one can mat it in a turn and the rear steers more than required. If a vehicle begins oversteering around a corner, the driver must make a steering correction against the turn. Taking the foot off the gas is the WRONG thing to do. (Ask any good 911 driver!)
A better explanation that any experienced driver can understand is that oversteer is where your passenger is scared; understeer is where the driver is scared.
Now these are extreme cases. Tuning a vehicle using tire pressures can only be done in quite small increments. Remember that you want to optimize the tire contact patch on the end that needs it the most and you want to slightly compromise the tire patch at the other end.
If you drew a graph of tire pressure versus traction, it would be slightly bell-shaped, where as one added pressure, the traction increases up to a maximum point (at about 80 to 90% of the maximum pressure at max load as stamped onto the sidewall) and then as you add more pressure, the traction begins to DECREASE. You are therefore not doing any good, traction-wise, by overinflating your tires. (As someone else already said, your tires are riding on the center of the tread now and not the whole tread.) If you underinflate your tires, your are not only compromising traction but also compromising their load-carrying ability. That's why I say one can't go wrong for an average driver to use the door-sticker pressures.
But for those drivers who want to 'tune' their suspension a bit better than average - keeping in mind you can't get any better than the vehicle and tire manufacturers have given you - you find out which end loses traction first and then try to bring that end to max potential by increasing the pressure to 80 to 90% of the max. This makes the vehicle a bit more 'neutral' feeling in corners.
Increasing pressure in the rears would not help the rear 'slide' any better but instead would help the rear bite more, unless of course you increased the pressures to the far side of the traction versus pressure bell-curve, but then you are not gaining anything and risk prematurely ruining a set of tires through overinflation.
So on the tires I run, maximum traction is about 38 to 40 psi. Because the front needs all the traction it can get, that is what I inflate the fronts to. But don't forget that if I inflated all my tires that high, my ride would be a bit less comfortable, so the rears get slightly less; about 32 to 34 psi.
Every tire is different though, and these pressures are simply guidelines. Start by reading your tire sidewalls and use 80 to 90% of the max pressure listed as a starting point for the max traction pressure and see how it feels going around fairly fast corners. (Don't exceed any speed limits, of course.)
Start with slightly less pressure in the rears for a better ride for your passengers and adjust from there. If the ride is still too harsh, bring all pressures down a bit more (but never below the door sticker recommendations) and remember that the soft ride feel is more a function of rear pressures than front pressures.
Also, don't forget we are talking small increments that average drivers would not even begin to feel, let alone know how to adjust. Most drivers go through their entire lives and never know what understeer or oversteer is. Some younger drivers may have never experienced power-on oversteer or power-off oversteer, other than maybe taking mom's grocery getter to a deserted parking lot with their friends late some night and doing doughnuts.
Also, don't forget that every tire is different. Some tires are rated or known as 'maximum load' tires and are designed with thicker sidewalls than normal. (This is one of the key differences between tires designated as 'P' for passenger vehicle and those designated as 'LT' for light truck vehicles. LT tires can carry a greater load, but at the expense of a harsher ride.) Let's take a P245/65-17 tire, for example. The Michelin LTX M/S is rated for a maximum load of 2035 pounds at 44 psi. The reason we don't need to go to a heavy load or LT tire in this size is that 2035 pounds of load-carrying ability per corner is plenty to carry our Trailblazers plus fully loaded with all potential gear. Now let's say they made an LT245/65-17. (They don't, but let's pretend.) It might have a maximum load of 3000 pounds per tire at 60 psi. Those are pretty stiff sidewalls and there is no way we are going to pack our Trailblazers with 12,000 pounds of truck, passengers and gear, so the load-carrying ability is far more than we need. So are the max pressures. If you were running these tires, one could go much lower pressures for a better ride and still get good traction. Every tire is different and every bell-curve is different but I would predict our hypothetical LT tire would achieve maximum traction at 70 to 80% of the max pressure as listed on the sidewall, instead of 80 to 90% like our P tire.
Okay, I apologize for the overly-lengthy explanation. I hope it explains it better. (One of the things I do is police vehicles editor for a national law enforcement publication, and if I over-write something, I always have an editor to slim it down and 'write me pretty.')