Hello Josh,
Yes this is the fundamental difference: explain record > to display/understand vs merge or split duplicates > to take action.
Per the documentation's words:
Explain Record for a fuzzy-matched record to graphically view the matches and consolidated values.
Merge or Split Duplicates to reorganize groups of fuzzy-matched records.
Josh WOOD
We've noticed it seems like the Merge and Split views contains everything in the Explain Record view in addition to the ability to edit and merge/split.
Wondering if there's anything else fundamentally different between them?