> [Horgan] puts all his energy into expanding his popular reach.
I would not say 'all', but this bet fits the claim. If he had lost, his position as a prescient naysayer would be gone anyway, while a win could be used to boost it, even though, as it happens, no decisive case against string theory (or for an alternative) has emerged in the interim. In a sense, this bet is a columnist's hedge against there being no news.
For any counterparty, however, a win would have been completely overshadowed by the science itself. A person might be happy to accept the bet as a form of harmless entertainment, but for Horgan, it was more than that.
I would not say 'all', but this bet fits the claim. If he had lost, his position as a prescient naysayer would be gone anyway, while a win could be used to boost it, even though, as it happens, no decisive case against string theory (or for an alternative) has emerged in the interim. In a sense, this bet is a columnist's hedge against there being no news.
For any counterparty, however, a win would have been completely overshadowed by the science itself. A person might be happy to accept the bet as a form of harmless entertainment, but for Horgan, it was more than that.