Explain to me why we would rationally support the idea of styling a link to look like a button, or styling a button to look like a link?

If semantics (choosing <a> or <button>) matter at all, don't they matter in terms of user expectation with what they see/interact with?

IOW, if a user sees something that looks like a button, don't they expect it to behave like a button (performing an action, not changing the URL, etc). And if they see something that looks like a link, don't they expect it to navigate to a different URL, be alt-clickable, etc?

It seems to me that if you advocate "tricking" the user (with cross-styling) like this, then you've already invalidated any claims to "but semantics matter". At that point, it can't matter whether you use an <a> in the markup or a <button>. Semantics are not *only* for SRs.