Quick note.

>One of the main characteristics of fractals is that they are self-similar

This is only almost true. A fractal is characterized by having a fractional dimension. This is what allows measurements to be different at different levels of detail.

I feel its the same story in the theoretical departments in academia.

This is the first time i hear this analogy and its brilliant.

The linked quora post is even "better" imho (but i hate quora - here is the link to a blogpost for that quora answer https://web.archive.org/web/20160123213328/http://michaelrwo... )

This... makes a lot of sense.

This was excellent.