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The article says the bet is this: "Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023." It is a straightforward fact that no such mechanism has been discovered, and that is all we need to show that Koch has lost the bet.

You don't understand how bets work. The parties involved decide the conditions, not you or me.

The neuroscientist wagered that he or other neuroscientists will achieve something in 25 years. They did not. If the goal was poorly specified or impossible to achieve, that is on the person starting and accepting the bet.

In order to understand, then we'd have to have a good definition, no?

They started with a hazy idea of what consciousness is. They bet that they'd have a better definition.

There was certainly the possibility that they could have disagreed on the outcome. But there is really no dispute.

The possibility of disagreement would have mattered if the bet itself were significant, but it wasn't. It was always a tiny stake.