This. A pixel is a point sample, not a tiny square - even in pixel art. That's why "upscaling" pixel art even to seemingly ludicrous extents is in fact quite appropriate. If you interpolate with a Gaussian kernel, it will yield something very much like what CRT's display, but in a purely digital interpolation you can do a lot better than that. A Lanczos-based resampling gives you a 'watercolor'-like effect that optimally accounts for every single pixel in the original image, while keeping the upsampled image smooth with no "pixelation" whatsoever. (Pixel-art specific algorithms are appropriate to images or sprites with a small color palette, where it is desirable to keep this constraint and generate sharp boundaries between differently-colored areas. Even then, the point is basically to keep things smooth while optimally accounting for what's in the original image.)