"Julia Evans" [off-list ref] writes:

I do not see the point of implying that the commit ID is not "special", or that
it's only one of many ways to find a commit because to me it seems very special,
since there is no way I know of to retrieve a commit that doesn't ultimately
end up using the commit ID at some point. (though that ID might not be encoded
in hexadecimal)

That is not what I am trying to say.  The hexadecimal name is the
most neutral way to refer to a commit object, and in that sense it
is special.  It is the way ref subsystem uses to record the name of
objects, and that makes it special enough.

But that does not mean that the name _is_ the object.  The
hexadecimal name is a way you use to name the object, but is not the
object itself, and the special-ness of that name does not change it.