> most of your examples would not be considered expressions in the given language.

So that's a piece of cognitive load that you have to carry to know when the parentheses are on an expression, and do not change the meaning if compounded, versus when they are around something else where they may not be removed or compounded.

In Lisp, everything is an expression, and no there is no willy-nilly removal of nesting or compounding of nesting. That's less to remember.

Even fragments of forms are expressions, according to ANSI CL glossary terminology. If we have (let ((a b)) ...) then a, b, (a b), ((a b)) and let are all expressions. With the exception of b, what they are not is forms: expressions presented for evaluation.

> Ultimately this argument is anti-productive nitpicking.

Who started it?