It can get confusing. Here's what no one has spelled out for you. When speaking of advancing or retarding a camshaft, Lets say "we're gonna advance the cam 6 degrees". What that means is, we're advancing the CAMSHAFT six degrees at the CRANK. Camshaft degrees, even though we're moving the camshaft, are spoken about in crank degrees. 6 degrees at the crank = 3 degrees at the cam, since the cam turns half crank speed. But, everyone speaks in crank degrees, since that's how an engine's timing is read. Make sense?