Kingdom of Knuffel

From The Book of Questions by Gregory Stock.

Question #25: For an all-expense-paid, one-week vacation anywhere in the world, would you be willing to kill a beautiful butterfly by pulling off its wings? What about stepping on a cockroach?

I would kill the cockroach for it because they arent supposed to be in the house anyway.
If it wasnt in the house Id leave it be though.

Id feel bad, though.

I would not even consider killing the butterfly. I would consider the cockroach, but I would probably pass. Even the cockroach would bother me, and I don't want to leave home for a week anyway. I'd kill a flea for a free, local, one day vacation though!

I'd kill the butterfly. It's terrible and all, but I'm assuming it isn't an endangered species. There are more. I can't deal with roaches. I cringe from across the room trying to spray it with Raid. While I'd love to kill one for a vacation, I cannot get that close. And I definitely need a vacation!

That cockroach would be dead even without the vacation, if I get a chance at it.... sorry, some critters I save (spiders I carefully transfer outside, for instance), but cockroaches? Nope. It's dead. Vacation would be a bonus.

Torturing a butterfly to death? Nope. Ask me to humanely/quickly kill it for a vacation, and if it's a common species I probably would. Definitely not torturing it to death, though. I wouldn't torture the cockroach to death, either.

I'll either kill it fast or I won't kill it at all.

I probably wouldn't mind killing the cockroach too much since they're really gross.

But I wouldn't want to torture it. I wouldn't want to torture a butterfly either. I'm generally against torture.

Yeah, these questions are kind of funny in their assumptions.

They're comparing killing something explicitly stated as beautiful, for gain, with something that's commonly viewed as ugly and fear-inducing, for gain, but then they add in that you have to kill it in a way that causes gratuitous pain, and I'm looking at that going, "which question are you actually trying to ask, here? Because you're mixing up a number of factors without separating them out at all"

Wait wait wait, no, I wouldn't kill a butterfly by inflicting great pain upon it, no matter what damn reason you give me. Why? Why would you go out of your way to kill anything in such a way, if you also have the ability to give it a humane death? Well, why kill anything at all for no reason, but much less through torture???

But yeah, I'd absolutely step on a damn cockroach if I find you in my damn home. Gods, they're disgusting. Outside though, naah, probably not. Their home, not mine.

And I wouldn't believe you anyways, you damn lunatic. :/

Some of these questions sound like really strange reality-show script proposals.