Entirely agree. Automatic conversions just means things can convert in unexpected ways. Actual calls are more reliable, especially for maintainability.
And yep, all of this.
The big thing is the Ownership Validation, it just outright removes entire classes of bugs from even having a chance of happening in safe Rust code! In addition it helps enforce a ‘one true way’ for writing fast code. The slower the code runs the longer it tends to be. The shortest way tends to be the fastest because of that.