OMG! Stop it with the freaking bet!
Jezzzz
Let's discuss why I do this! Humans are incredibly poorly calibrated. Not only are we often poorly calibrated but even experts are poorly calibrated, to the point where when experts on a specific subject make a prediction and give a percentage confidence, it will happen with a lower rate than that. And even experts are
vulnerable to the conjunction fallacy where humans overestimate how much a conjunction of events is likely to occur if it has some sort of plausibility to it as a narrative.
Worse, we often say things that we don't actually believe. People on both sides of the political aisle in the US make these claims routinely. Back when George W. Bush's Presidency was ending, some liberals claimed to think he was going to extend his Presidency somehow, including by declaring martial law. Curiously, some conservatives made the same claim about Clinton, and some conservatives are now making the same claim about Obama. The evidence suggests that this sort of event is either much less frequent than people claim it is or that they don't really believe it. That is, when someone says "Obama is going to declare martial law!" they really don't believe it, what they really mean is "Rah! Obama bad!" And that's fine as an opinion to have, but it means that people aren't thinking as carefully as they could, and worse they are damaging the signal to noise ratio.
So asking people to bet is an excellent way of getting people to think more critically about what they actually believe and whether the claims they are making are real or tribal cheering.
Let me give a non-political example that may help: I have a very religious Orthodox Jewish friend who claims to be convinced that the Messiach (the Jewish Messiah) is going to come very soon. Since the religion has a prohibition on gambling, I offered to donate $100 to a cause of his choice now and in return if the Messiach hasn't come in 10 years, he'd have to donate $200 to one of my choice. He refused. Yet, this is someone who verbally claims repeatedly that this event is likely to happen soon, and if he had me donate it to Chabad (a Chassidic Jewish organization trying to hasten the arrival of the Messiach) he should expect it to become even more likely.
Asking people to bet is an excellent way to see what they really believe and how much they actually believe it.