I know this question prob seems ridiculous to scientists?!

The way calories are calculated in foods is essentially overcooking the food until it turns to ashes in a bomb calorimeter.

In the kitchen when you overcook, you are essentially drying out the food. Water has no calories.

However, you are also charring the food (converting to carbon) which has no calories, but you're really not charring that much.

If you overcook by boiling, you're essentially mushing out the food. The main loss there is a little sugar, but you take a big hit in vitamin loss.

In other words, the calories are pretty much there. You would probably lose 5%, but if you cook it in oil, you're probably adding 15% in calories.

Finally, the one advantage us humans have over animals is the ability to cook. Cooking allows us to eat a wider variety of foods since cooking makes more nutrients and calories available than can be got from a raw state.

When you are cooking your food - overcooked for that matter, you don't actually change the chemical composition of the food. This means to say that it wouldn't have less calories than the food that was not overcooked. You cannot change the caloric quantity of the food just by cooking it. And, no the question is not silly. You just probably had the "thought of the day" where you are left wondering.

You can't change the number of calories in a portion of food whether it is raw, cooked, overcooked. A property of food is what it is. You can't have it cold or hot and have less calories. Some foods require more energy to burn than the food has in itself. No silly questions if it's a thought in your head!

Your confusing the word burn with cooking. By burn, it means the time it takes to work off the calories in the food which you put in your body. It takes longer to burn off the calories of a candy bar than it takes to burn off the calories in a carrot stick.

if you overcook, the calorie difference would be minimal

if you completely burned the food... (completely blackened/charred) the majority of what would be left behind would be carbon, which would be devoid of calories.