  When biological communities use signaling structures for complex
coordination, 'free-riders' emerge. The free-riding agents do not contribute to
the community resources (signals), but exploit them. Most models of such
'selfish' behavior consider free-riding as evolving through mutation and
selection. Over generations, the mutation -- which is considered to create a
stable trait -- spreads through the population. This can lead to a version of
the 'Tragedy of the Commons', where the community's coordination resource gets
fully depleted or deteriorated. In contrast to this evolutionary view, we
present a reinforcement learning model, which shows that both signaling-based
coordination and free-riding behavior can emerge within a generation, through
learning based on energy minimisation. Further, we show that there can be two
types of free-riding, and both of these are not stable traits, but dynamic
'coagulations' of agent-environment interactions. Our model thus shows how
different kinds of selfish behavior can emerge through self-organization, and
suggests that the idea of selfishness as a stable trait presumes a model based
on mutations. We conclude with a discussion of some social and policy
implications of our model.
