I can actually enjoy (reasonably intelligent) mundane conversation for an hour or two at a time, though I do start to get lack-of-abstraction claustrophobia after a while. I'm going to see if there's some way to get people out of the highly concrete chitchat vortex.

I love the terms "lack-of-abstraction claustrophobia" and "highly concrete chitchat vortex." You have a way with words.

In my experience conversations may start with mundane subject matter, but with interesting and intelligent people, they dive off into abstraction and more interesting topics. For instance, what people do usually comes up early on, like with the pacifist lawyer, and that gives you a chance to talk about more interesting things. I tend to like asking probing questions early on, or casually throwing out some of my interests, and seeing what comes up.