Hardly. We use this reduction because it's essential from a mathematical and axiomatic perspective and because limits are a fundamental construct. But more philosophically, a natural and nonterminating simulation of 0.999... (were it possible) would never strictly equal 1. You would wait an infinite amount of time for it to do so. This comes down to how you view the problem. I would never argue with this through the lens of abstract higher mathematics. I think about it from a computability perspective, which is one way in which you can discount the observation.