What you see as talking about the weather is like seeing two women looking at each other whereas it's really a picture of a vase and 4D part-subconscious dog-butt-sniffing status/value computations between you and the other person. Also there's few other opener topics.

Wait, even small talk is about status / position in a social hierarchy? Are you sure?

Usually it isn't but it definitely can be. E.g. at a party asking people what they do.

It's not necessarily about winning a social power battle, but it can be used to discover what sort of person someone is so you can interact with them easier.

“Rich internal experience” doesn't mean the same as “deep experiences”, any more than “rich flour” (e.g. powdered rye grain) means the same as “deep flowers” (e.g. the bright yellow bit of a daffodil plant); and I was speaking in generalities, not universals. You're right: it would have been kind of hilarious had I been insisting upon what you said, because even I can see it's very false. Most allistics are, after all, capable of creating and appreciating meaningful art (albeit, usually limited to the types and genres of art considered conventional by local society during the first couple dozen years of their lives, unless they've been through particularly-significant external experiences).

> people don't talk about the weather because they are super interested in the weather

Meteorologists do.

I get that small talk is a social bonding exercise, and that "the weather" is just a common example of an inoffensive, vaguely-relevant shared experience. I understand why people would default to this if they didn't have much else to talk about, and they felt an instinctive obligation to prioritise perceived inoffensiveness to society-at-large over the actual joy of the actual conversation participants.

I just don't understand why this limitation is considered a good thing. Surely people would prefer to talk about something they enjoy talking about, and hear about something they enjoy hearing about? The fact that people can't – or feel they can't – is surely a bad thing… or, at least, morally neutral. The downsides of autism are paraded around everywhere, yet the downsides of allism are, via Tall Poppy Syndrome, somehow transmuted into downsides of autism? Like, do people not notice they're doing this? Clearly not, if https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4296736/ (2006) is anything to go by.