Sure.  It&#x27;s a heuristic, not a logical proof.<p>And, I mean, we can&#x27;t get energy just by digging in the ground.  We didn&#x27;t just poof, start flying over the ocean.  We don&#x27;t produce fertilizer just poof out of the air.<p>Also:  we knew before the Wright brothers that heavier-than-air flight was possible (birds).  We didn&#x27;t go from nothing to oil-fired modern powerplants in one step.  If someone had claimed to generate electricity from something random in the ground -- even inefficiently -- without piggybacking on centuries of preexisting power generation technology, I&#x27;d probably have been skeptical.  And my skepticism would probably have been justified.