Information is now established as a scientific entity on a par with matter and energy. However, unlike matter and energy, which are reliably conserved under normal physical conditions, information can be created or destroyed at will. And if matter and energy are (more or less) real physical quantities, information is virtual. This is what Heinz von Foerster means when he says, “The environment contains no information.” Information does not exist until an observing system (such as a mind) constructs it — renders it as a “virtual reality” for a cognitive process — in response to the noise of environmental perturbations. Thus, enthusiastic ontological proclamations, such as Stanislaw Lem put in the mouth of his character Pirate Pugg in The Cyberiad, merit satire for the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (in Alfred North Whitehead’s phrase). Information has no concreteness.