NYCWriter, you seem to have a HUGE misconception on your hands. There is no "fascination" with dishwashers. Your comments are made without research.
Yes, there are people out there that Pre-Rinse their dishes. I won't say "gluttons" as that might include members of this forum who have very good reason to Pre-Rinse in the first place (Lack of funds to replace current machine, Vermin problem not isolated to one's own home).
First of all, Provided you have a good dishwasher to start with, you DO NOT have to Pre-Rinse your dishes. Barely scrape, if that.
Loading the dishwasher shouldn't be a challenge for anyone, unless they are challenged to begin with, or use machines of differing design to others (E.g. DishDrawers).
Washing and Rinsing the dishes. This is where you make the most ridiculous comments of all, "And using water hotter than human hands can stand? Caustic detergents? What the hell are you people putting on your dishes? Ebola experiments?"
Well, if you consider that human hands can be scalded even at 120º, then I think you are seriously out of line here. You need to SUSPEND the grease compounds in the water, not swirl them around and leave them congealed all over the plates.
And following the Hot wash, your dishwasher actually does something called the RINSE PHASE. This rinses those "caustic compounds" off your dishes. Unless you use the cycle with only one rinse. This leaves your dishwasher and dishes CLEAN and FREE of residue, especially on machines rinsing 3 times following the wash. And right there is why I use the "Delicates" cycle on my machine, as I receive a 3rd rinse, but the machine takes about 15 minutes less on this cycle and still produce impeccable results even on the worst loads.
Drying your dishes: Machines today often don't have the option of heated drying, but you can still select the "Hi Temp Rinse" option and flash dry your dishes. You can save about 30 minutes of "fanning" the dishes right there and then, and dry all the dishes in about 5 minutes.
Concerning efficiency, dishwashers today are certainly VASTLY efficient to how I wash my dishes: I Rinse my plates, cutlery, cups, then wash them. I change the water in the sink OFTEN, so I am not washing in filth. I then thoroughly rinse the dishes following. A load of dishes would EASILY cost me around 100L of water. My DishDrawer does the same thing with just 10L of water (Delicates cycle. Normal uses less as it lacks 3 rinses) and about a KWh of electricity, at worst (22c for me). Guess what? Impeccable results all the time. Rarely do we ever re-wash anything. Our soils don't sit for days, but are still quite heavy to say the least.