Thanks for all your comments on my “enemies list.”  Two thoughts:

1. Many thanks to Sam for pointing out Luis Angeles’ retraction.  Since the thrust of my discussion of kids and happiness is that the observed effect is negative but small, I was only going to footnote Angeles’ article as a counterexample.  But now I don’t even have to do that.

Incidentally, I’m incredibly impressed that Angeles publicly admittedly the mistake.  That takes a lot of courage and integrity.

2. I thought about putting anti-natalists on my list.  But it seems safe to ignore them because (a) they’re extremely rare, and (b) no broader audience will take their complaints seriously.  If I took their complaints seriously, of course, I’d feel obliged to address them despite their low status in the world of ideas.  But as a big believer in the philosophy of common sense, anti-natalism seems absurd to me.  If an idea has neither intrinsic merit nor social traction, the marginal benefit of discussing it seems less than the marginal cost.