Whatever happens, the end result on two different nodes doing the same merge operations (or a commutative ordering of those merge operation) would be identical.

Think about a CRDT document: if two people edit the same line, regardless of what happens, once the documents synchronize, the final state of the document will be identical. That’s also the reason manually resolved merges don’t work because two different people might resolve the same conflict in different ways. But again, the conflict resolution being identical under any commutative ordering of simultaneous operations is the hardest requirement of CRDTs. The commutation requirement is what kills the “always theirs” or “always mine” strategy (there are other scenarios but that’s the easiest one to demonstrate).

Ahh, now you're missing some critical details: How can a CRDT perform a sane merge? (Remember my quick brown fox example.) IE, is it destructive (picks one) or does it output something like: "The quick brown fox !!!(ran around|||dug under)!!! the fence."

This is kind-of what git does: It leaves a sane conflict in your source code. (The result is always the same given the same inputs, too.) The merge conflict might not build; but how git handles merge conflicts will always result in a functioning git repository.

tbh it's increasingly sounding like you're defining a CRDT as "something is decided and written down in all cases" and simply ignoring every single other quality they guarantee.

Those other qualities matter. So much so that they're literally the defining qualities.

Yeah I'm done trying to help this person understand the differences between Gits and CRDTs. They're being intentionally difficult by redefining CRDTs to "what Git does" rather than evaluating Git against the properties a CRDT is defined to have.