I like the comment that likens this sort of deeply-linked knowledge to a DAG. In my own (limited) experience, once I’ve mentally found the DAG where every node

I like the comment that likens this sort of deeply-linked knowledge to a DAG. In my own (limited) experience, once I’ve mentally found the DAG where every node either references some other node or baseline knowledge, the learning task almost immediately switches from daunting to routine. Just work on understanding each node in the dependency chain until you get to the one you seek!