The notion of lost information seems paradoxical from the perspective of fundamental frameworks like quantum information theory which regard information as ontologically primary and conserved. However, our empirical experience frequently involves missing information and uncertainty. This exploration aims to delve into this puzzle of apparently lost yet ultimately conserved information in physics and philosophy. Relevant ideas around entropy, measurement, decoherence, ignorance, encodings and context are discussed. Significant open questions remain around reconciling subjective appearances with an information-centric ontological orientation. We routinely encounter lost or missing information in various forms: * Entropy – Incremental data loss as systems degrade and disorder increases. * Forgetting – Fading memories and inability to recall or access past knowledge. * Horizons – Information beyond cosmic, event or complexity horizons we cannot observe. * Noise – Gaps, errors and randomness that disrupt transfers and measurements. * Unknowns – Questions that remain unanswered or even unasked. * Potentialities – Unactualized pasts and futures that never manifested physically. From our empirical perspective within time, these represent very real instances of incomplete information and uncertainty. However, information is conserved in quantum theory, never lost: * Decoherence – Loss of interference patterns with environment interactions. * Wavefunction Collapse – Probabilities resolve into singular actualities, excluding other potentials. * Black Holes – Apparent destruction of matter-information through gravitational singularities. * Holographic Principle – Complete encodings of volumes on bounding surfaces. * Eternalism – Block universe perspective where all events and times objectively exist. Conceptually, subjective missing information may reflect limited cognitive access and function. Developing expanded interpretive frameworks to connect relative and absolute perspectives on information remains an open challenge. Significant philosophical dilemmas around experiential incompleteness versus conservation laws remain largely unresolved. This requires maintaining conceptual superposition between notions of both persistent and ephemeral information. **Key guiding principles:** * Information ontologically underlies existence. * Finite minds have restricted informational access. * Contextual, perspectival truth. * Pragmatic instrumentalism. * Multi-layer encodings link reference frames. * Information can be retrieved from unconscious realms. Lost information appears meaningful mostly within localized subjective reference frames. But the holographic totality eternally endures in the quantum realm. Information lost or missing from limited temporal vantage points may remain encoded in larger unified frameworks. The physics of information conservation appears to clash with instances of experiential uncertainty. Significant theoretical and experimental work remains to bridge objective and subjective perspectives. Developing expanded modes of information processing is key to resolving the paradox.