That is undesirable for two primary reasons:
1. I would not reach my primary goal of "grok how packages interact".
I think a better way to proceed, which will be quite confusing itself :-) is to
simply explore those relationships using the tools that there are. Rather than
exploring it less-systematically under trial by fire. If you want to experiment live
while exploring, fire up a VM at the same time.
2. Uncertainty of what the resulting "thing" would be.
This shouldn't be an issue IMO. Why is that important?
It's a Debian system with certain packages installed. If you work
in a data center and manage hundreds or thousands of servers,
for example, your config management software cares. You don't.
But I see no reason to care or stress on this in any context.
Comments/suggestions/readings/search terms.
TIA