[glenstein]

Good point. I would guess, since it's all moot from the perspective of the person making those predictions, the whole exercise is just a theatric flourish, meant to communicate in a more or less performative way.

The other (perfectly plausible) answer is that the part of one's brain that believes the claim, and the part of ones' brain that believes in the power of bets and value of money that make bets interesting, are brain regions that haven't reconciled with one another.