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That video is about how "self-similar" is not sufficient for fractal. (The rest of the requirement is some notion of fine detail at every scale, which the video focuses on.)

It is widely agreed that self-similarity is required for fractal, although often interpreted as quasi/statistical/multiple similarity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal

Put another way, some things are self-similar but lack detail (for example, a straight line), and some things have detail but not similar detail at all scales (for example, a meterstick with ticks at every millimeter) and some things have infinite detail but no similarity (for example, purely entropic noise that cannot be compressed or expressed as a structure)




The core idea of a fractal is something having fractional dimension. It just happens that the ones we know of are self-similar. If we had a formula that generated different shapes ad infinitum, I would also call that a fractal.


It may be "self-similar" in a particular mathematical way, but fractal does not imply "self-similar" in the way people expect.


I think you meant "not necessary".




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