Happiness being subjective is exactly why it is an important metric. We are conscious beings with subjective experiences. I don't care how many studies say that I'm objectively happy I read, if I'm not happy, the metrics are meaningless and perhaps even harmful to me.

That being said, optimizing for some of these collective benchmarks does create some baseline stability from which people can pursue and build their own rich, meaningful and happy lives.

They optimize for system health, not health of each node. However, a healthy system is great, though if all the nodes kill themselves, or tear the system apart, maybe it isn't so healthy?

I'm referring to slow suicide through "lifestyle choices", and war, both physical and cultural.

So work should be done on all levels of abstraction, from the system level down to the compute node, and even lower, to the energy, and maintenance of compute subsystems.