With every benchmark there is an objection, because every benchmarks measures a specific thing, and that specific thing is not the thing everyone wants to see measured.

These benchmarks tell you what performance you get with this array of programs, on linux, with these machines. You want to know something about the inherent performance capabilties of each cpu, which is very hard to figure out, since we will never know when/if any of these programs has had a totally optimal solution for each piece of hardware.

Usually the best you can do is just measure actual programs people use.

Wasn't this precisely the chicken/egg problem electric cars had to solve to start getting the adoption they're seeing now?

It is practically true! Beware of "Bionic Duckweed" and pricing in apparent future (thus yet nonexistent) tech (or software).