@evan — you know, it would be swell if you didn’t presume the rest of us didn’t know what we were doing.
I have no installed plugins except akismet.
I have no installed themes except twentythirteen.
Oddly, all my other WP installations updated fine, without this error. But one of them has the error, and even after reinstalling WP repeatedly, the error is still there.
It’s not about the plugins or the themes. It’s about something else.
BTW, that you did not have a problem is no proof that other people didn’t or shouldn’t have it.