Comment by defrost

It's an understanderable deference when stumbling through a huge new field and its freshly minted jargon when tidying up and tying the new jargon to long standing terms in older fields.

"As near as I can tell when the new guard says X they're pretty much talking about what we called Y"

Does 'attention' in the AI bleeding edge really correspond to kernal smoothing | mapping attenuation | damping ?

This is (one of) the elephants in a darkened room that Cosma is groping around and showing his thoughts as he goes.

> I hope this doesn’t discourage him to keep publishing his notes

Doubtful, aside from the inevitable attenuation with age, he's been airing his thoughts for at least two decades, eg: his wonderful little:

A Rare Blend of Monster Raving Egomania and Utter Batshit Insanity (2002)

http://bactra.org/reviews/wolfram/