Regarding the question "How does remote viewing work", there seem to be two opposing camps:

1. Remote viewing is a way of non-local perception of physical reality.

2. Remote viewing is a way of accessing thoughts, which means we can also see fictional stuff.

As far as I'm concerned, the latter is true, which leads to the question: How do remote viewers distinguish between real and fictional targets? Is that even possible?

Here's an attempt to explain how remote viewing actually works, and how the distinction between real and fictional can be done.

The question is: If the remote viewers only access thoughts, how do we remote view physical reality?

This is not a problem at all if you know that all things in physical existence have an equivalent in thought. Everything that exists only exists because an ISBE thought of it and created it. You can understand it this way:

Because of the Natural Law of Cause and Effect, reality is divided into two basic "planes" of existence:

1. The Plane of Causality (Mental World)
2. The Plane of Effects (Physical World)

Whereas the Plane of Causality is the cause for everything that happens in the Plane of Effects. In other words: The physical world is the result of acted out thoughts that happen in the mental world.

When you remote view, you are accessing the Plane of Causality. That's where all the thoughts are, including dreams. This means that you also access thoughts that haven't been acted out, and therefore don't have a representation in the physical world.

In order to access the physical world with remote viewing, the tasker would have to limit the scope of the target to thoughts that already have a representation within the physical world. This also explains why we can't verify future targets – because not all decisions that need to be made to realize that outcome haven't been acted out yet.

Here's a video of Mark Passio explaining the Planes of Cause and Effect:

To begin with, I have to say that I don’t agree with your theory. But I also have to admit that at the moment there are no studies, or very few unverified ones, that could confirm your theory, my view, or what Courtney says. Since none of the mainstream media are conducting research on how remote viewing works , because why would they, we’re left in a situation where we basically know that we know nothing, and we can only guess.

Here’s how I think RV works:
And just to be clear, I’m not a physicist, so I might mix up a few things.
– Everything is a wave, which means that a person doing RV can move through and penetrate any place, thought, or event, whether it’s something real and tangible like a car, or something fictional like Superman or Winnie the Pooh.
And it’s precisely this ability to be a wave that allows someone to see everything. For someone doing RV, there’s no difference between a fictional target and a real one, because both the fictional and the real are also waves.

That’s how I see it, and whether I’m right or you are is something that will only become clear in time. With the current state of knowledge, all we can do is speculate and argue, because each of us has the same chance of being right — none of us can actually verify the truth. Anyone can go to Paris and confirm that the Eiffel Tower is there, but not everyone can verify how RV works or what exactly is happening.