Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic, titled "How to Tell the Difference," presents a deliberately absurd question -- "What do you think is the dollar value of a leaky sack of monkey foetuses in the Bering Strait circa 1979?" -- as a litmus test for distinguishing a normal person from an economist. A normal person responds with justified bafflement: "What the hell is wrong with you?!" An economist, however, asks a clarifying follow-up: "Real dollars or nominal dollars?"

The joke satirizes economists' professional tendency to treat any question about monetary value as a legitimate intellectual exercise, no matter how grotesque or nonsensical the scenario. The distinction between "real" and "nominal" dollars is a fundamental concept in economics -- nominal dollars refer to the face value at the time, while real dollars are adjusted for inflation. The humor lies in the economist completely ignoring the absurdity and moral repugnance of the scenario to zero in on a technical methodological detail, suggesting that economic training can override basic human reactions of disgust or confusion.