I was thinking something along those lines too. As if a baby starts with a fully connected network of many nodes, then over time experience strengthens some connections as others drop out. If the connections were to return to an evenly connected state everything would have been forgotten, but anything could then be learned as all capacity to learn has returned.

Dropout is random, rather than learned. But I can see how it could have a similar effect to forgetting.

would dropout be considered forgetting or learning to use as little information needed to get the right answer?