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I think his argument is that without type inference, programmers will avoid more complex types, and therefor model their domain with less precise types.

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Yup :) The comment is valid though: you don't get more type safety because of type inference. Thus saying it gets more typesafe is probably wrong...

The curious case of the broken inverse: you won't get more type safety by having type inference, but you are likely to end up with less type safety when you are not having it ;)

I have seen no evidence of that. With that logic, Java programmers would use "Object" instead of "List<String>" because they have fewer characters to type?

This makes no sense.

It makes more sense after you have deliberately weakened the typing of an API because you felt that you were overstretching your co-developers (and/or your own) patience for nested angle brackets.

The basic idea is that type inference would shift the sweet spot for the right amount of typing upwards.

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