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Vaucasyvaw-kuh-see
n. The fear that you're little more than a product of your circumstances, that for all the thought you put into shaping your beliefs and behaviors and relationships, you're essentially a dog being trained by whatever stimuli you happen to encounter--reflexively drawn to whoever gives you reliable hits of pleasure, skeptical of ideas that make you feel powerless.
Etymology
From Jacques de Vaucanson, a French engineer who built a series of lifelike programmable machines (automata), including his masterpiece the Digesting Duck, which could flap its wings and quack, drink water, and digest bits of grain into simulated excrement.
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