h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This isn't a paradox, but I think this is a good place to put it. Here is how it goes.

There is a lamp that will grant it's user 1 wish. This lamp cannot be given, it must be sold, for the money of the land (not favors, or diomonds, only cash). If you die with this lamp in your possesion you are damned to enternal suffering. No one may buy this lamp without knowing all these rules. With all that stated, how much would you buy this lamp for, granted you have to sell it before you die.

Would you buy it for 5 dollars?

Oh yes, the "wish" in this question is meaningless. You cannot use the wish to modify the argument, or wish for eternal life, or with for more wishes. It doesn't matter what you wish for. The wish is simply a reward that is impossible to pass up. Not a tool for solving this question as it has no solution. It's simply a question of your character.

Wow I forgot the most importiant part. When selling it, it must be sold for LESS then it was purchased. The lowest amount it can be sold for is 1 penny, and the person who buys it for one penny is damned.

In both versions of that puzzle the mathematical solution is to steer well clear of it. However small the probability that you get stuck with it is, and however large the reward, your expected utility ("happiness") is -infinity. In the second version, it's like the "unexpected test" paradox, nobody would take it if they were thinking logically and attributing the ability to think logically to everyone else. Of course, they don't have that ability which is why your reason for not taking it should fall back to the expected utility argument.

So are you saying you would never buy it? Not even for $100?

Yep. Weedy, eh?