That's a totally valid point, but is 100% orthogonal to what's being discussed. Invoking a single command to validate, run callbacks, persist to the database, e

That's a totally valid point, but is 100% orthogonal to what's being discussed. Invoking a single command to validate, run callbacks, persist to the database, etc, etc. a model (and the larger argument of whether conflating DB access and persistence logic is a good thing) has nothing to do with whether the object is aware of it's own properties. They are both critcisms of ActiveRecord, for sure, but quite a bit different in content. One (AR objects not knowing their own properties) feels, at least to me, like an unfortunate early design decision, while the other (encapsulating everything involved with saving a model in a single statement, "magic avoidance" be damned) is very much in line with the core philosophy of ActiveRecord and Rails.