> A state machine cannot reconstruct the past. It can only move forward. Payments Engineers must avoid state machines. I don't follow. Of course a state machin

> A state machine cannot reconstruct the past. It can only move forward. Payments Engineers must avoid state machines. I don't follow. Of course a state machine cannot reconstruct the past. But you can keep a little auditing framework/logic alongside the state machine to keep track of the event history. So I don't really follow how you can leap from "A state machine cannot reconstruct the past" to "must avoid state machines." There is no logical connection between the premise and the conclusion!