Why doesn’t 2**3 in Python evaluate to 9? Not because that’s what 2**3 inherently means — any more than the seven-letter sequence C-H-I-C-K-E-N inherently means any gallus gallus domesticus. In 1991, Guido van Rossum selected ** as an exponentiation operator for Python and defined its behavior. He could have used ^ instead and made ** a multiplication operator. If he had, then 2**3 would evaluate to 6.
I was confused by this section of the passage, unsure why Guido van Rossum had not just used the "^" operator for power, so I did some research into the topic I found a stack overflow article explaining that "**" represents to a power, while "^" represents bitwise.