I am having trouble understanding the meaning of the real value of an economic quantity.
The concept is easy to grasp: take a year as a base and adjust for inflation by pricing a commodity with the prices from the base-year.
As I understand it, the real value of, let's say, an orange is, or should be, close to its intrinsic value. It measures the how we value an orange by its potential. This intrinsic value is dimensionless (?).
My difficulty is to reconcile the fact that humans do not think in real terms: we observe and value everything via its nominal value.
In the hypothetical case of comparing two objects that have the same use (let's say, oranges from X country and orange from Y), we always use its nominal value to determine what to buy.
What could be an example that could convince me that the real value is a useful metric to analyze economic data?
What is the philosophical reason to use real vs nominal value?