Minerva remembered what Harry had told her... how people were usually too optimistic, even when they thought they were being pessimistic. It was the sort of information that preyed on your mind, dwelling in it and spinning off nightmares...
But what was the worst that could happen?
Actually, what is the worst that could happen? It's not [the structure of the universe is destabilized by the breakdown of causality], because that would have already happened if it were going to.
The obvious one would be [Eliezer loses $20,000], except that would only occur in the event that it were possible to violate causality, in which case he would presumably arrange to prevent his past self from making the bet in the first place, yeah? So really, it's a win-win.
Unless one of the people betting against him is doing so because ve received a mysterious parchment on which was written, in ver own hand, "MESS WITH TIME."
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110922/full/news.2011.554.html
http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897v1
http://usersguidetotheuniverse.com/?p=2169
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3027056
Perhaps the end of the era of the light cone and beginning of the era of the neutrino cone? I'd be curious to see your probability estimates for whether this theory pans out. Or other crackpot hypotheses to explain the results.