Realist in this context refers to the belief that quantum mechanics is an approximation of a deeper deterministic theory in which "god doesn't play dice". The

Realist in this context refers to the belief that quantum mechanics is an approximation of a deeper deterministic theory in which "god doesn't play dice". The underlying theory should reproduce all predictions of quantum mechanics in the relevant limit, so it has nothing to do with human understanding at macro level. Wanting to believe the laws of nature at the lowest level are deterministic is more like a religious belief than anything else at the moment because as of now, there's no experiment which shows that. By the way, people who use quantum mechanics for practical ends tend to not care whether the dice is really real or "emulated" to give the exact same probability distribution, because to them, this is rather a philosophical question with no practical implications.