I was using "intrinsic" inappropriately, I think, to mean both substitution of method calls and substitution of bytecode patterns. Yeah, the JVM already does the second thing. It's not roses for them, either[0]. The thing that I've been looking for in all this discussion is acknowledgement that the JVM team has been doing this, has encountered engineering challenges to the point that they're willing to change javac to simplify a jet, and an explanation of how these weird VMs are so different that none of that matters and using a shitload of jets is perfectly fine.
[0] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/280