Fair! I would be in the flashlight camp because I find that I need to see things a lot more then I need to cut/pry things. For example over the weekend a glass fell and shattered so I set my light on the floor to find the small shards as we cleaned it up
Honestly, a knife is more useful. But I enjoy the "showing off" aspect more for a light. Like, I've never shown off a knife to a group of people and got a positive reaction. But you pull out a multi-thousand lumin light when it's dark, you are going to get a reaction.
That's a good point, one of my favourite things about lights is that you can take it anywhere. I've had mine at airshows, on the Eiffel tower etc with no issues. I don't think I could do the same with a knife
My swiss army knife is great because I have a beltpouch for it. I guess what I really need is a beltpouch for a good small torch, but I've so far not done that. Interesting thing to consider. However, there is always a torch on my phone, and never a knife, so I might choose the swiss army knife again for that reason....
Around home I use a light a lot more, and can always get a knife from the kitchen drawer if I need one. Outdoors, probably knife, though it seems like a false dilemma. You want a knife of reasonable size, but even a tiny keychain light (I mean the coin cell Photon style, not a high power one) makes a ton of difference. And a small modern 1aaa light is almost as good as a big light. Add a little bit of elastic cord and you have an impromptu headlamp.
Knife for sure. I don't usually carry a larger folding knife. I normally just bring aroind a victorinox rambler. But the utility with the bottle opener, scissors, toothpick, and tweezers is hard to beat. Plus my phone hase a flashlight built-in.
If we're taking more hypothetically and it's was just a flashlight or a plain folding knife with no other items. Then I would probably keep my answer, the folding knife.