wikipedia choose your own adventure

Noun. When you find a concept that a person who is brilliant wrote, that you don't understand. You open the wikipedia article about that concept, and open tabs in your browser for all of the links in that wikipedia article that you also don't understand. Eventually, you have 25 tabs open and you hit the terminal point where you understand, then you work your way backwards through the other 24 tabs until you understand it all. Choose your own adventure books were books that had many possible endings depending on the pages you chose. They were entertainment circa 1985.

How does MD5 hashing work? It uses one way functions...How do one way functions work? Uh oh, time for a wikipedia choose your own adventure.