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timtyler comments on Homogeneity vs. heterogeneity (or, What kind of sex is most moral?) - Less Wrong
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Re: The human, trying to balance collective ethics vs. individual ethics, is really just trying to discover a balance point that is already determined by their sexual diploidy. The transhuman, OTOH, actually has a decision to make -- where should that balance be set?
It seems like a rather vague question - since it doesn't specify a scale of measurement - or how far in the future we are looking. Look far enough forwards, and there may be only one organism - in which case the issue doesn't arise.
The speed of light strongly implies that this won't happen.
The speed of light is not really much of an issue here. What would eventually cause problems is if universal expansion drove the living regions of the universe into causally disconnected regions - as can supposedly happen in some cosmologies - but that possibility seems a long way off.
I think we may mean different things by "one organism", then. I think I'd say that processes would have to be fairly tightly coupled (even if through other processes) to be parts of the same organism, but that couldn't easily be achieved with even minute-sized delays.
The idea of all living things forming one big organism involves the end of evolution via natural selection, due to the lack of independent actors for there to be competition between.
I have some essays explaining what I think is meant by the idea:
http://alife.co.uk/essays/one_big_organism/ http://alife.co.uk/essays/self_directed_evolution/ http://alife.co.uk/essays/the_second_superintelligence/
Like you say, you seem to be talking about something quite different.