We introduce SmileyNet, a novel neural network with psychic abilities. It is inspired by the fact that a positive mood can lead to improved cognitive capabilities including classification tasks. The network is hence presented in a first phase with smileys and an encouraging loss function is defined to bias it into a good mood. SmileyNet is then used to forecast the flipping of a coin based on an established method of Tasseology, namely by reading tea leaves. Training and testing in this second phase are done with a high-fidelity simulation based on real-world pixels sampled from a professional tea-reading cup. SmileyNet has an amazing accuracy of 72% to correctly predict the flip of a coin. Resnet-34, respectively YOLOv5 achieve only 49%, respectively 53%. It is then shown how multiple SmileyNets can be combined to win the lottery.

When I was twelve years old, I was fascinated by psychic powers. It's a provocative notion, to be able to reach out and push things around, hear what other people are thinking, or tell the future, all just by using your mind. I read everything I could find about ESP, telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition--the whole gamut of mental abilities that stretched beyond the ordinary. I was a big fan of comic books, where all the heroes were endowed with superpowers, but also of science-fiction and fantasy stories, not to mention straightforwardly "scientific" accounts of what purported to be evidence for human capabilities beyond the normal. I wanted to penetrate the mystery, figure out how this kind of thing could really work.