> If casting from a string to a type works with ints and floats, why not with bools? What possible justification is there?

> I'd honestly much prefer bool() threw an exception on receiving a string, rather than act the way it does now.

They serve fundamentally different purposes. bool() is a truthiness check and not a type cast like int() and float(). It seems like a lot of people take issue with the name, because it was called something like istruthy() the discussion about it wouldn't be happening.