[eru]

What odds would make you take the bet?

And, perhaps let's talk about a conditional bet that removes the difficulty of space exploration:

The bet pays me X dollars, if human vessels can go to the asteroid belt and not find life. It pays you Y dollars, if we find life. And no payment in either direction, if we can't go to the asteroid belt and don't find life. Say, all limited to the next 100 years.

What's the ratio of X to Y that would make you accept such a bet?

[hyperpallium2]

(not OP) Another clarification: before you said "non-earth life". Panspermia[1] implies Ceres and Earth life are related, so that native Ceres life is hard to distinguish from Earth's (and arguably is the same as Earth life).

1. Backtrapolating exponential evolution finds an origin older than Earth. https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381

[eru]

To be more precise: what I meant is life on Ceres that hasn't come accidentally from any of our own probes since eg the start of the 20th century.

I'd be happy to pay up in case of pre-historic panspermia.