What's in a git merge conflict?

There's something that was bothering me lately about git conflicts:

How come git knows which side is which, and when there is a conflict or where there isn't?

I have the notion of the common ancestor to base the versions off of, but when people do heavy cherry-picking (which is mostly a single branch operation).... how come git reconciles the contents?

Well... as usual, things in git are..... simpler?

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4920885/what-constitutes-a-merge-conflict-in-git